The Templar Death, Shaken not Stirred
by ElMarquis
Summary: Harry is involved in a temporal incident during a skirmish with Voldemort at Privet Drive. For him, a decade later, with new allies and a love, he returns on the Autumn Equinox a few months later, a powerful mage with a dislike of those corrupted by dark magic and abilites to kill a Dark Lord. How does a man who wants nothing more than peace struggle through brutal, bloody battles?


_Harry Potter and Salazar Slytherin are meant to look a bit like Caspian X from the second Narnia film_

_Rowena Ravenclaw is meant to look a bit like Arwen from LOTR minus the sticky-out pointy ears._

**1995 AD**

Harry was restless. Since Voldemort's resurrection, he had endured nightmares of the graveyard at Little Hangleton. The Dursley's were, for the most part, leaving him alone. Eventually, he chose to disregard Dumbledore's orders of confinement and isolation and summoned the Knight Bus with an outstretched wand after he heard the light snores and drunken stench of one of Dumbledore's assigned guards.

"Welcome to the-" Stan Shunpike began.

"Diagon Alley please Stan." said Harry, handing him a galleon.

After a hectic rush through the British Isles, the bus delivered a somewhat green looking Harry Potter at Diagon Alley. Quickly slipping under a hooded cloak and doing up the clasp, Harry purposefully made his way to the imposing marble edifice which contained Gringotts Bank. Passing the guards stood around the varnished wooden doors, he strode through the imposing banking hall, lined with hundreds of goblins working at polished wooden desk. Walking up to a teller who was idly weighing gems and stated;

"Master Goblin, I would like to be taken to my vault please."

"Name?"

"Harry James Potter, vault 687." Harry answered.

"Which vault Lord Potter-Black?" replied the goblin, finally showing mild interest in the young man stood before him.

"I have more than one? I only knew about vault 687..." Harry said, bewildered.

"Am I correct in thinking that you are unaware of your possessions?"

"Indeed you are, I have visited Gringotts once in person in the summer of 1991 and was taken to vault 687. May I enquire to the size of my holdings?"

"Lord Potter-Black, the Potter fortune itself makes you richer than most purebloods such as Malfoy, while the Black fortune is lesser but still significant and has the means to pauperise the Lestrange and Malfoy families..." mused the goblin.

"Can I find out about my accounts please?" Harry asked.

"If you would wait here please, Lord Potter-Black." said the goblin before vanishing behind the desk and running off as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him.

Five short minutes of confusion later and several hasty conversations in the goblin's guttural language and Harry was stood in the deserted, spartan office of a senior goblin. The furniture was of French Renaissance style, a crystal chandelier hung over the room and hundreds of different swords, axes, spears and other weapons lined the walls. Accompanied by a guard of two goblins, a pinstriped suit-wearing goblin strode in, three small wooden boxes clutched in his hands.

"My Lord Potter-Black, I am Account Manager Ripclaw and I welcome you to our bank. I have been lead to understand by Teller Goldbludgeoner, that your knowledge of your heritage and that of the Potter-Black families and their fortunes is at best minimal and at worst completely absent...?" the goblin asked.

"Indeed, also, may I enquire as to how am I Lord Black as my godfather, Sirius Orion Black is still alive and in the direct male line for ascension to the Black lordship?"

"Due to Scion Black's incarceration, be it legal or not, it activated his will, naming the grandson of Dorea Black as his heir, and in turn, that of the Black family. Dorea Black married Charlus Potter, your grandfather. Thus, upon his incarceration, you were emancipated, granting you free will and meaning you cannot be controlled by any over your own wishes and means that you can immediately claim the title of Lord Potter." Ripclaw answered.

"Okay... How do I officially claim the my lordships?" Harry asked.

"Simply take the rings from their boxes, which are on the table next to you and place them on your right fingers, the familial magic will perform the rest. The final box, the one with the gold chain, is the trunk-vault and library created by the Potter family many generations ago when they were somewhat nomadic, they kept their coins, treasure and books on them, a tradition carried forward to today, it comes as a pendant to wear around the neck. We can remotely access it for transfers and suchlike from here."

Harry quickly slid the rings onto his fingers and looped the pendant over his head and tucked it beneath his shirt. Seconds later and searing pain crashed through his head, almost prompting him to scratch his eyes out. A black mist coalesced into a demonic form as it rose from his scar, screaming like a tormented banshee.

Straightening up after a few moments, Harry realised he couldn't see, everything was horribly blurred. Attempting to rub his eyes, Harry knocked the glasses off his face, revelling in the clarity of the world as he saw it. Every few seconds, pain racked his body as the magic of his rings healed over a decade of abuse and malnutrition, utilising the newly freed magic which had been leached off by the soul piece in his scar.

Glancing in a highly burnished shield, Harry was shocked to see a tall, lithe young man stood where he was, the t-shirt he was wearing constricting his shoulders and stretched tight across his chest, showing some growing musculature beneath.

"The Potter vault contains around twenty million galleons liquid, that is several millennia of careful investment and a copy of the Potter Library. Moving onto the Black family, while the Black vault is around four million galleons liquid and a copy of the central Black Library, you also have access to the two million galleon Lestrange vault as it passed to the Black family upon the incarceration of the Lestrange brothers and Bellatrix. There is also a moderate library in that vault."

"I would like to transfer 75% of the Black vault liquid to the Potter vault. What is the usual commission for the investment's manager?"

"0.4 % commission per annum." replied the goblin.

"2% commission if the vault recovers to 50% liquid capital, 5% commission if it recovers to 80% or 7.5% commission if the vault recovers to 100%, in a single year." Harry said, noting the gleam that entered the goblin's eyes.

"It shall be done. To withdraw coin from your pendant, press your wand against it and say the number you want and a coin bag will appear with the contents." said the goblin.

"Finally, can you transfer all books, scrolls and suchlike into the Potter vault?"

"I will oversee the transfers myself. I will also endeavour to earn the commission that you offer. You, Lord Potter-Black, bargain like a goblin, you entice me with something which I get while performing a service for you resulting in me not wanting to damage your income as it would damage my own income, that is a rare quality. That and all the snobbish purebloods refuse to trust a 'filthy creature' with anything more than guarding their vaults." Ripclaw nodded approvingly.

"I thank you for your time Master Ripclaw." Harry said with a slight bow before sweeping out of the office and returning to the Alley.

His first stop was Madam Malkin's where he quickly purchased a simple black robe and a cloak to go with it before venturing into Knockturn Alley. Striding straight into Borgin and Burkes, Harry caught sight of the greasy shop owner.

"BORGIN!" he barked; "I want to see your entire collection of literary items, especially combat magic, Mind Arts and the Dark Arts!"

"Yes sir, if you'd come this way." replied the sleazy man as he beckoned Harry through.

The back room was lined with various artefacts, a single small cabinet of books in one corner. Harry took a brief look through the glass doors, noting that the books, while useful, were not what he'd expect of the premier trader in Dark Artefacts and books.

"I'll take the contents of this cabinet." Harry said as he straightened up; "However, I would like to see your _true_ collection."

His glare was levelled at the shopkeeper as he pushed a bit of magic into his eyes, allowing them to glow a killing curse green.

"Very well sir." Borgin said, cringing away from the annoyed customer.

"I wouldn't like your... esteemed... establishment to lose the custom of the Lord Black and my family." Harry commented.

He was quickly lead through a trapdoor and down a short flight of stairs and into a vaulted cellar, lined with books. As a brazier in the centre of the vault lit, Harry could see the titles of the books. It was an incredible collection by the darkest, the lightest and the most powerful witches and warlocks over several thousand years.

"For every book in your collection Borgin, ten thousand galleons." Harry proposed emotionlessly.

"Forty thousand." replied the shopkeeper.

"Fifteen." countered Harry.

"Thirty."

"Twenty and no more and I will likely give this shop my future patronage." Harry riposted.

"A deal, Lord Black."

Harry quickly swept the shelves of their books and placed the Potter trunk on the floor and enlarged it, placing each stack of books onto the top and gently pushing them down until they disappeared. After nearly five minutes, the entire basement was empty of books and the shopkeeper and customer ascended into the main shop once more.

"How do you intend to pay Lord Black?" asked Borgin greedily.

"Do you have an expandable bag?" Harry asked.

Taking the proffered bag, Harry whispered to his money-pouch;

"Twenty thousand."

He then upended the pouch into the bag until coins ceased to rain from the Gringotts Money-pouch.

"Your money is there Borgin." Harry sneered.

He then quickly strode out of the Dark Arts shop, inwardly resisting the temptation to use one of a selection of fire curses he knew to burn it to the ground. Once again walking down Knockturn Alley, Harry found a rickety building housing a wandcrafters. According to a book he had found the previous year, crafted wands were much more suited to their wielders than the generic wands usually bought. Apparently the Ministry didn't want their citizens to have perfectly matched wands, thereby making the production and purchase of such wands illegal.

Harry paused for a moment, contemplating the fact he was about to break the law. 'Think like the enemy' he had thought earlier. What would Malfoy do? It was then Harry decided to wage war on his own terms. If necessary, he would wield his significant political power as a Lord of two noble families, then there was always bribery and blackmail.

He stepped through the doorway and into the stygian gloom of the ramshackle building. Behind a worn desk was an elderly man of short stature with short, wild hair and a long, slightly curled beard and moustache with a pair of pince-nez perched upon his nose.

"I'm assuming you wish to acquire a wand or wands, young man." quietly asked the man; "I'm Corvus, master wandcrafter for longer than most have lived."

"I do indeed Master Corvus. Currently, I am in possession of a single wand, eleven inches of holly with the tail feather of a Fire Phoenix."

"Please come through. I have a selection of wand blanks and cores which you simply run your hand over until you find those most suited to you. I have only ever had to make two wands at once, but somehow I feel you'll exceed that."

Harry was led into a workshop which looked like it belonged in the back of an antique furniture restoration business. Thousands of vials lined one side of the workshop while the other three walls were lined with simple branches of wood. He slowly ran his hand over the vials, picking out several and placing them in a vial rack on the workbench.

"Interesting, Dementor's cloth, Basilisk's eyestalk, Chimera's heartstring and Werewolf fur make for strength with Dark Magic and curses in general. However, Metamorphmagus hair and Grim's blood will excel in transfiguration and concealment while ground Phoenix feather, Austrian Winged Viper heartstring and Veela hair will excel at fire-based magic and explosive magic." commented the wandcrafter as he gazed at the vials on the rack sat on his workbench.

Harry then made his way over to the walls and spent nearly twenty minutes selecting the wand blanks.

"Birch, symbolises cleansing of the past and new beginnings. Acacia is a symbol of a long journey with a great reward and Oak symbolises nobility, courage and strength. Fir symbolises fortitude while Maple represents a balance, one that is neither dark nor light."

Two hours later and Harry had forked out several thousand galleons in return for his wands and the basilisk hide holsters. The first wand was Maple and Fir combined and the cores of Dementor's cloth, Basilisk's eyestalk, Chimera's heartstring and Werewolf fur. The second wand was of Metamorphmagus hair and Grim's blood with Acacia wood while the final wand was made of dragon heartstring, ground Phoenix feather and Veela hair.

On his way out of Knockturn Alley, Harry stopped at a Wizarding Armourer's. He ended up with four chainmail, dragonhide and Acromantula silk battlerobes, four simple robes made of comfortable linen and two dress robes made of Acromantula silk and velvet.

Having purchased sufficient clothing, Harry ran his hand over a rack of blades, picking out a pair of swords and a dagger. The dagger was an elegant, thin bladed stiletto with a cross-guard, the swords were a heavy bastard sword for heavy combat and a lightweight arming sword, more suited to fencing and agile movement. Feeling he was well equipped for close quarters, Harry returned to Diagon Alley.

His first stop was the Wizarding World's central bookshop. Over the next half an hour, Harry raided Flourish and Blotts for material on warding, runic magic, advanced transfiguration, charms, healing, swordsmanship, magical transportation and combat magic, ending up spending several thousand galleons on books, something well worth it in his opinion.

Having secured his books in the library in his pendant, Harry visited a camping shop purchased a wizarding tent with several years of food supplied stored under stasis, a small potions lab, a sitting room and four bedrooms. Harry shrank it and put in a pouch with an undetectable expansion charm.

Labouring under the delusion that he was suitably armed and prepared for whatever fate could throw at him, Harry summoned the Knight Bus and paid for his trip back to Privet Drive.

Upon returning as the evening light began to fade, Harry knocked on the door of Privet Drive before using a simple unlocking charm to open it.

"FREAK! Get in here!" bellowed the hippopotamus-impersonating human known as Vernon Dursley, reaching out to grab Harry by his neck.

Drawing a wand with lightning-quick speed, Harry jammed it in Vernon's flabby chin and pushed a bit of magic into it, heating the tip slightly.

"I believe that you just called the Lord Potter and Lord Black a freak. I once knew a family of freaks, they locked a child in a cupboard, punished him for things he had no idea of. No longer Vernon. I could gut you before you could say 'ouch' and vanish from the police or make it look like you tripped over and fell on a carving knife. DO NOT TEST ME." Harry said dangerously, prodding Vernon's stomach with his stiletto.

He retreated to his bedroom for the foreseeable future, expanding it massively and creating a room where he could practice magic.

Harry spent the next week under several magic absorption wards he had learnt and created, in his room practicing from the incredible collection of magical tomes he possessed. He was advancing quickly since he had had his core unbound from the cursed scar, his conjuration and battlefield transfiguration becoming quick and brutal. Harry's curse repertoire was quickly expanding, while he still would be hesitant in fighting Lucius Malfoy or someone as powerful and skilled as the blonde Death Eater, he was certain that he could still inflict significant harm upon his opponent.

An experiment he performed had interesting effects, while he was mainly non-verbally casting, Harry tried verbally incanting in parseltongue, causing a stunning spell to mimic a killing curse in colour but act as a cross between a massively overpowered concussion charm, a banishing hex, a bludgeoning hex and a stunning spell. While he disliked the diseased, rotting feeling that the Dark Arts gave him, he was able to resist their effects using his burgeoning Mind Arts.

While Harry wouldn't try this against Voldemort due to his understanding of the serpent-tongue, this could be useful against other Death Eaters who wouldn't know what spell was coming and might freeze up at the intimidating jet of green light rocketing toward them.

He'd been making a point to pack everything, save the single set of clothes he was wearing at the time, into the tent he had before placing it into the Potter trunk at the end of a day, something he was about to thank the heavens for. Dozens of sharp cracks echoed throughout the neighbourhood as many hooded, cloaked and masked Death Eaters appeared around Privet Drive.

"Come out Harry, come to death." hissed a sibilant voice Harry recognised.

Unholstering a wand, Harry walked down the stairs calmly, unafraid to face the walking nightmare as he left the front door of the Dursley's, drawing a wand.

§Since you asked nicely Tom... Ossum Reicio!" Harry hissed in parseltongue.

The bone-exploding curse streaked past Voldemort, slamming into a Death Eater. Platinum hair splayed out as Lucius Malfoy's chest exploded in hundreds of shards of bone, killing him brutally, shredding his internal organs and showering the other Death Eaters in blood and vicious bone shards which rocketed through the air.

Harry didn't stop to watch, he was moving the moment that the curse had been fired from his wand as a second spell, a powerful cutting curse slashed off another Death Eater's arm. Calmly, almost as if watching from a third person, Harry called out;

"Come Tom, shall we duel?"

"You wish to die?" hissed the Dark Lord, incensed that he had just lost a Death Eater as important as Malfoy.

"Death is but the next great adventure." said Harry calmly, firing an organ liquefying curse, he looked into the Dark Lord's eyes and saw incredulity and... fear.; "Wait... You truly fear death Tom, are you afraid of becoming nothing? Or is it the spirits of those that have died by your hand that you fear?"

Raising two wands, Harry channelled the two spells, ancient battle magic, which he had learnt, Cataegis de Sagittæ, the arrow storm and Arcticum Tempestate, creating a tempest of freezing air, ice shards and with thousands of arrowheads mixed into the whirlwind of death. He watched morbidly as one Death Eater was shredded by the ferocious magic, being torn to ribbons by the vicious magic.

As Harry turned, he watched the Dark Lord's killing curse impact him in the chest, throwing him back. However, as it passed through the the battle magic, the fundamental composition of the magic changed. Instead of moving the soul from Harry's body to the afterlife, the killing curse moved his soul, body and all on it, through a temporal black hole. Before falling, his last act was an incredibly powerful blasting curse which rocked the neighbourhood.

**June, 985 AD**

Blinking slowly, Harry awoke in a small forest clearing, motes of sunlight shining from between the leaf-laden branches which surrounded and covered him in a canopy of green. Checking himself, he still had his possessions on him, despite his apparent death. Four wands, the Potter trunk with the library and vault, the tent. Check, check, check. Releasing a wand with a twist of his wrist, he flicked it once, swearing softly as he looked at the just-cast Tempus charm.

**'Midday, twentieth of June, 985 A.D'**

Gathering himself together, Harry pulled the hood of his plain robes over his head and gathered his magic up, releasing it as he projected himself to Diagon Alley.

The alley had changed much, being a hard, compacted earth track with stalls and a small row of buildings on one side. Gringotts was a much lesser building, created of rough limestone, though it was still imposing.

After a few minutes deliberation, Harry decided against using his name, choosing a name of his own creation. 'Arlyss FitzPotter' would do. He could use Harry if he chose instead of the Saxon word for Honourable, while changing his surname slightly as not to cause problems with his own ancestors.

Retrieving a language pendant from his trunk, Harry found himself able to understand and speak the English tongue of the era. His first purchase for fifty Galleons was a large plot of land in the South Downs of Sussex, being given the deeds granting him ownership immediately by the land dealer. Making his way to a magical builder, Harry contemplated what to do with the land. If the price of his purchase was representative, his fortune in gold that he had possessed in the future was worth thousands times more here.

A brief conversation and a transaction of a thousand galleons and Harry had commissioned a stone fortress to be built on the newly purchased land, leaving a fee for the best wards that could be bought to be erected around the site. Harry finished his business before heading to Gringotts, a coin bag clutched in his hand, containing five thousand galleons, barely making a dent into the significant fortune he carried. Walking straight up to a goblin, he asked, thanks to the pendant, in fluent Gobbledegook;

"I wish to open a high security vault with a blood lock and a key lock."

"Minimum deposit is ten galleons for a high security vault." replied the goblin.

"I will be depositing five thousand galleons, I hope a suitable goblin can be found to increase both his own and my own fortune, with a 2% commission on any income made?" Harry said.

"Bloodstomper! Take our honoured customer to High Security No. 2 and install key and blood locks!" bellowed the goblin to a second.

Harry was hurtling into the quickly warming depths of the earth in a goblin cart moments later. After a short and exhilarating ride, they arrived at High Security No.2 where Harry was prompted to place the palm of his hand against the door. A needle jabbed into his hand, extracting a blood sample while the goblin placed a heavy iron key into the lock and opened the vault. Inside was a small, rock hewn cavern with a flat floor. Throwing in the bag of coin, Harry stepped out, watching as the tally parchment racked up the number of galleons before ceasing at five thousand.

He conjured a length of ribbon and tied it through the handle of the key he was handed before placing it over his head and around his neck. Once again, Harry was on the surface after a short uphill ride in the cart with the goblin. Apparating away blindly from Diagon Alley, picturing a random meadow, Harry landed in a field, the blue sky shining down upon him.

**June, 986 AD**

Spending a year cooped up wasn't a great idea mused Harry as he rejoined society after twelve months of being isolated, a hermit. Having spent a year in his tent under numerous charms and wards, Harry studied every bit of magic he could from the Potter Library. While there was little on exotic magic from the eastern world, from Greece to the Orient, Harry thought that his knowledge of western magic was unsurpassed, with his collection of spells, most of which had yet to be created.

During his meditation, Harry had stumbled on his Animagus form, a sentient part of his own mind and being. The Imperial Phoenix, a dark purple eagle-type bird, almost black in colour, had taught him how to use his Animagus form's magic, even in human form before he could transform. It took him eight months before he could become the magnificent phoenix.

It was during his excursion to Diagon Alley when Harry noted a poster for a duelling tournament. Deciding that such an experience would be both fun and useful, he immediately enlisted for the tournament. A visit to the builder's shop he had commissioned to create his castle procured a Portkey to the completed site.

Just a week later and in the centre of Wizarding London and Harry was stood on a raised stone dais, wearing a pair of black battlerobes with a simple white cross on the front, one wand held out in a duelling stance that would be unlikely to be used for several centuries.

The final duel of the day was near its beginning and Harry felt fairly confident, thus far, he had disposed of each opponent with incredible ease and style, going no further in lethality than overpowered stunning spells to bring down his opponents. After each bout, the winner would be given the wand of each opponent as a trophy for winning the duel. Harry's wand collection was going to be substantial by the end of the competition.

The moment that the flag was waved by a member of the aristocracy who was managing the duels, the two fighters attacked, Harry staying with basics while his hooded opponent using increasingly lethal spells. Finally after several fierce exchanges of spellfire which left Harry with a long scar across one cheek from a barely avoided cutting curse, his opponent was sent flying by a chain of bludgeoning hexes and banishing charms.

Taking his opponent's wand, Harry walked over to the fighter he had been against and handed it to him;

"You fought well, you earned this. May I enquire who I fought?" he said.

"The serpent. I thank you, and may I enquire as to the name of my opponent?" replied the green robed dueller in a slightly raspy voice.

"The templar." Harry replied, using the nickname he had given himself.

"Shall we drink?"

The two duellers left, heading to a tavern where Harry bought them both mugs of mead.

"It is strange to come up against a dueller who I can match, so far today I haven't left the spells I learnt in the first few years of school and beaten my opponents with ease. I shall remember the serpent as a worthy opponent and a friend." Harry said, raising his mug in a salute the the hooded man opposite him and taking a gulp.

As the honey liquor flowed down Harry's throat, the man opposite him pushed back his hood slowly. Harry's eyes widened slightly as a man who could have been his twin, both had long hair tied back, both were clean shaven, both had aristocratic looks, high cheekbones and a look about them which displayed confidence.

"I would ask of you if you know anywhere I could stay. My family threw me out, though they cannot disown me as I am head of the family, my mother, the dowager and my younger brother, filthy little brat, Salazar junior, are acolytes on the altar of darkness. The Slytherin family is rotten, they wished me to torture an innocent for amusement, saying 'Just a filthy mud dweller Salazar, one less to breed'. I have no home any more..."

Behind his occlumency shields, Harry was reeling, the man opposite him was a twin of himself and then revealed himself as the infamous Salazar Slytherin. If he could either find that the history of him was false or prevent the fall of Slytherin, Harry was happy to.

"I have a home, I don't believe it has been furnished yet." Harry responded cautiously.

"I would be in your debt, Templar." replied Salazar.

"Very well, I go by the name Arlyss FitzPotter, though I usually refer to myself as Harry. Grab on!" Harry said, draining his mug.

Salazar grabbed his sleeve the same moment as Harry activated the Portkey he had earlier been given to his estate. They were stood outside the wards of a magnificent fortress, four circular towers stood on the corners of the curtain wall, set on the hill above. A heavily battlemented keep lay behind a gatehouse with two D-shaped towers.

Drawing a wand, Harry spent five minutes connecting the control ward to the simple ring he had visible. A band of gold, a circle of obsidian and an ivory cross moline set in it, the item which had created the entire 'Templar' identity. Having attached the control ward to the ring, Harry keyed Salazar into the wards, allowing him access.

A five minute walk later and Harry approached the gates and portcullis, followed by Salazar. A couple of mental commands to the templar ring on his hand and the heavy, blackened steel portcullis rattled up into the gatehouse above the arch and the gates swung open, banging against the stone with a deafening thunder.

Within a few minutes, Harry and Salazar were sat in the main hall, eating a house elf cooked meal as Harry thanked the deities that he'd though to get domestic staff for the castle and that they'd properly furnished the building. The elves had even acquired half a dozen horses who were kept grazing on the castle's lawn and stabled near the gatehouse.

**December, 986 AD**

Over the next sixth months, the duelling circuits were dominated by the Templar and the Serpent, both masters of the art of combat. Harry had put much effort into training himself and Salazar,they were up at dawn, running circuits of the curtain wall and performing numerous exercises to keep themselves in top condition.

Salazar and Harry heard one day that the Slytherin family would be attending a ceremony with the local nobility and took the opportunity to raid Slytherin Manor for every book and item worth taking.

"_Harry, I was in the market not far from my family's manor, there is a large ceremony and parade occurring in three days and they will leave the manor. This is the perfect opportunity to empty the library and study the contents." Salazar said as he found Harry practicing his swordsmanship against an animated dummy._

"_Very well, I wouldn't want to leave knowledge in the wrong hands..." Harry replied, smirking in a way that he had picked up from Salazar._

After three days of minimal sleep and much planning, Harry and Salazar had a plan.

_They were hidden in the trees at the front of a grim looking building which exuded an aura of darkness, concealed under powerful disillusionment charms._

_Salazar's mother and younger brother strutted out of the manor, arrogance adorning their features. Salazar however was a much more aristocratic looking man than either of them, for they looked almost monkey-like with little in the way of defining features._

_Harry hissed softly and Salazar slipped away from his side, circling around to the front of the manor as Harry headed up the hill behind it. An hour later and a small lamp burst of sparks appeared in the forest at the front._

_Harry grinned and banished the cart he was leaning against toward the manor. It began rolling down the hill, faster and faster. Harry fired a burning arrow into the dry grass on the top of it and dozens of barrels of oil underneath burst into flames as the cart trundled with increasing speed toward the manor. A wind charm fanned the flames and sped up the cart. It burst through the wall at the back, crushing the wattle and daub walls into kindling and lumps of plaster._

_Within minutes, the Slytherin manor was blazing, black clouds of smoke billowing out from it as the hay cart, which had careered into the middle of the building, spread the flames into the principally wooden structure._

"_Burn baby, burn." Harry muttered happily as the roof fell inwards into the inferno with a resounding crash, further fuelling the blaze as it ravaged the building._

**December, 987 AD**

It took over a year to learn everything worthwhile from the Slytherin library while they burnt the books of Black Magic, destroying everything to do with Dark Necromancy, Dark Soul Magic and similar arts, although Harry memorised a few spells on Soul Magic to dispose of Voldemort should he ever be able to return to his own time. In amongst the books, Harry and Salazar found the notes referencing to a plan to publish the books, creating copies of such books on the darkest arts and placing them in the public domain.

Harry was certain he could gain masteries in defensive magic, offensive magic, transfiguration, ward creation and ward breaking after his years of study. Both he and Salazar were Masters of the Mind Arts, utilising shielding, redirection, false memories, nuisance defences, physical defences and lethal defences in their mindscapes and each one learnt to use legilimency for blunt, brute force attacks, probing and subtle, delicate infiltration of one another's minds. Salazar had adapted well to the magic that he was learning with his friend and honourary brother after a slightly tense conversation;

_Flashback:_

"_Salazar, what do you know of temporal magic?" Harry asked._

"_Very little."_

"_Some years ago, I was involved in a fight, somehow, a killing curse, passing through two pieces of battle magic, the arrow storm and arctic tempest,hit me. Evidently it mucked up the composition of the killing curse, which is supposed to remove the ties from soul to body and moved both soul and body here, it was late June 985 when I arrived. I was born in 1980. Much of the magic I will teach you has yet to be invented." Harry said tensely._

_Salazar fell off his chair, landing on the flagstone rampart of Templesbury Castle as they had named it._

"_All right there brother?" Harry commented blandly._

"_Tell me you jest Harry..." Salazar said disbelievingly._

_Harry merely leaned back in his conjured armchair, watching the evening sun lighting up the land around the castle and ignored the spluttering Slytherin. _

Unfortunately, the peace and tranquillity didn't last long, a necromancer heard of the Templar and the Serpent, the best duellers and most powerful wizards in the Isles and tracked them to Templesbury Castle. Harry and Salazar were perambulating around the ramparts when an army of Inferi appeared outside, a staff-wielding wizard stood at their back.

"_Templar, Serpent, surrender to me and I will give you power beyond anything you can imagine!"_

_Harry's response was a killing curse from behind the massive block of stone making up the battlements while Salazar fired a hail of burning arrows from his wand._

"_You'll have to come and get us!" Harry yelled, firing a second killing curse._

_For two weeks, Templesbury Castle lay under siege, Harry and Salazar repulsing repeated assaults on the castle, burning Inferi with their wide repertoire of destructive fire spells. Finally, after two weeks, a force of men appeared over the horizon. For hours, a bloody battle raged, Salazar and Harry leaving the confines of the castle walls for the first time in months._

_Eventually, the muggle soldiery aided by Harry and Salazar destroyed the Inferi horde, consumed by Fiendfyre or hacked apart by blades. The last enemies were the necromancer himself and a demonic creature he had summoned._

_Instead of calling for a surrender, Harry and Salazar engaged their opponents, Salazar killing the necromancer with ease as he had little knowledge of combat magic. Harry meanwhile was dancing around the bursts of pure Dark Magic and fire being thrown at him by the demonic creature._

_Harry fired a stream of killing curses, an organ liquefying curse and several bolts of black lightning, making use of his phoenix magic._

_To Harry's immense displeasure, the immense maul carried by the abomination deflected each and every curse he fired. Memories of a troll, many years ago, in a bathroom came to his mind. Harry grinned malevolently and levitated the war hammer and smashed it into the demon repeatedly. Five killing curses later and the abomination collapsed onto the earth, dead._

"_To hell you return, take your master with you!" Harry spat._

The men who had lifted the siege turned out to include King Æthelred, heading south to deal with Viking raiders. Sensing an opportunity, he offered Harry and Salazar perpetual license as Battle Mages should they choose to accompany him. Harry and Salazar agreed after the granting of arms to Harry as Earl of Templesbury.

_Recognising the seal ring of the King of England worn by the chainmail armoured man approaching them, Harry and Salazar fell on one knee before the him._

"_You fight with valour, I would be honoured should you accompany me to dispose of a contingent of Nordic raiders and I would give you perpetual and irrevocable license as Battle Mages of the crown should you agree. Your names?" said Æthelred._

"_Ares Salazar Slytherin."_

"_Arlyss FitzPotter;" Harry responded; "We would be honoured, should you grant us arms and title to Templesbury castle."_

"_I see no reason to deny your requests, I shall have a herald draw you arms and I will draw up your deeds to the title, arms and castle of the Earl of Templesbury and those of Ares Salazar, Baron of Templesbury, Royal Representatives to the Wizard's Council. Rise, Royal Battle Mages."_

After a week where they rebuilt the damage caused by the necromancer's siege before placing the castle in stasis, Harry and Salazar toured Britain with Æthelred, disposing of outlaws, killing dark wizards and repulsing Nordic raiders. Both men were somewhat legendary, the Serpent and the Templar. Harry usually wore a simple battlerobe of chainmail and dragonhide with a surcoat over the top. His insignia was a white cross on the black background with his coat of arms on the left side of his chest, over his heart.

The dragon and phoenix supported, black shield and golden visored helmet coat of arms haunted the few who survived the Earl of Templesbury. Predictably, Salazar's arms were supported by a pair of basilisks, the shield depicting a sword and a staff crossed over a castle.

"_The Templar!" screamed someone._

_Harry and Salazar stood motionless, a leaning slightly on their swords which had their points impaled in the mud. The two hooded figures stared through facial concealment charms at the bandits._

"_Shall we, Salazar?" Harry murmured._

_Moments later, their wands landed in their hands and curses began to flow. Harry's trademark spell-chain, the brutal reveller's fury tore apart several men. Three bludgeoning hexes, a ribbon cutting curse and a burst of war fire, picking up his opponents, tearing them apart in the air before destroying them with the fire._

_Salazar used a more internal approach; a triple heart attack curse, a bone exploding curse, two organ liquefying curses and the firestorm curse. Within minutes, thirty murderers, rapists and pillagers were dead and burnt. Harry had also hit two with Imperius curses, instructing them to kill their allies. While he disliked the Dark Arts, when it came to combat such as this, it saved execution after stunning and binding them and was incredibly effective._

_They looted the camp, freeing several prisoners of the bandits. Harry gained a selection of wands and weapons for his ever-expanding collection and a substantial amount of coin which he would give to Salazar as he had no need of any more money._

Eventually, the pair tired of the constant death and destruction and retired from the King's service, though they did tell him that should England need them, they would answer the call:

"_Æthelred, we tire of the constant death we cause, we tire of the warriors way, though should England need us, the call will be answered. When we first joined you, we were only around eighteen years of age, the past four years we have served you, but now Salazar and I ask of you to release us from your service, that we might learn of peace and give our services where the people need us." Harry said, impassioned._

"_Very well, the crown will miss your service and advice, but I, Æthelred, King of England, do release Ares Salazar and Arlyss, Baron and Earl of Templesbury from my service that they might serve the people." Æthelred replied._

_Harry and Salazar rose up from before the king, and swept out, deliberately billowing their cloak, a habit they had picked up to intimidate both enemies and allies._

_Outside were two black chargers, Athelstan, Harry's mount and Athena, Salazar's horse. Each man smoothly jumped into the saddle, sparks flying as their horses galloped out on the cobbles, leaving the King's home and riding into the sunset of England._

**April, 991 AD**

For months, Salazar and Harry rode around Britain, learning tribal magics and cultures, killing bandits, outlaws and dark wizards.

"_And expand your consciousness into the surroundings!" shouted the druid._

_Harry was sat cross-legged in a forested clearing next to Salazar. A robed druid was sat on a fallen tree trunk opposite them. Slowly, Harry pushed his mind through his own occlumency shields, filling the area with his consciousness._

"_Find anything alive, command it, control it, turn nature to your will but never abuse it!"_

_Slowly, Harry's mind crawled through the forest. Eventually, at one edge of his consciousness, a single wolf prowled through the forest. Gently, Harry commanded the wolf toward him. Soon, the beautiful, black furred creature was sat next to him, perfectly peaceful._

_**Greetings young one.**_

_Harry slammed his mental shields up fully;_

_**It won't help, I am Morcar, a shadow wolf, your familiar, your mind has connected to me on a base level, I am your companion**_

_**What?**_

_**For heaven's sake! You are my master, you feed me, I serve you, we can mentally communicate. Simple?**_

_Harry glanced at Salazar to see him staring into the golden eyes of a blue and gold striped snake as it wound itself around his shoulders several times before settling._

**December, 991 AD**

Harry knew their travels would shortly end as they rode, on their midnight black chargers, into a village called Hogsmeade.

"_Salazar, we should stay the night here, the evening draws to a halt and I tire of the saddle." Harry called._

_Indeed, though he had a reason for stopping, Harry was sore and tired of the saddle, while his charger, Athelstan,was a wonderful horse, many hours on horseback would break the best of men. Hogsmeade was much as he remembered it save the lack of shops, the buildings which would one day house them were simply homes, timber framed and walled of wattle and daub._

_Trotting elegantly through the village with Morcar at his side, Harry led Salazar to the Hog's Head, apparently the only tavern in the village. Throwing a single galleon to a stable boy, Harry slid out of the saddle and handed the reins to the boy. Salazar followed his example and they walked into the inn._

Godric Gryffindor and his wife Helga had travelled North from their home in the Gryffindor village to avoid plundering Welsh savages, picking up a young lady-in-waiting who had left her master, Rowena Ravenclaw. They were sat in the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade Village, contemplating what to do. Both women wanted to learn and to teach the magic which they were gifted with.

It was during the evening of their fifth day in residence when the door swung open and two figures strode in, both hooded and with immense power. Their auras were subtle, restrained but incredibly powerful, almost pinning the three travellers in their seats.

"Two ales, two stews and a steak." said one, placing a gold coin on the bar before settling into the seats at the table next to Godric, Helga and Rowena.

Godric could not help himself but listen in on their conversation;

"Tell me my dear Earl, what is your next idea for our lives?" one commented mockingly.

"Well my dear Baron, at least for me, I, the Templar, have far too much blood on my hands. I would like one day to be able to stop killing, but evil will never truly be purged. At least when we burnt down your little manor we wrecked the Slytherin family. I wish we could just cease being the Serpent and the Templar, maybe teach young wizards and witches to harness their magic."

"Go on."

"Teaching sounds more noble than massacring bandits and the occasional dark wizard, for I fear we become more like them every day... I am known as the butcher of Bath now!" replied the other; "My name, Arlyss means honourable, yet I doubt I know the meaning of honour anymore!"

"A dream Harry, it is wonderful but truly, we cannot rest until there is peace... Templar! No man you have killed deserves any less!" snapped the Serpent.

"Calm Salazar, dreams can be realised. Could we stop the evil before it manifests, teach them the limits of magic, dissuade them from using the Dark Magic we use, eliminate those that fall to the darkness?" sighed the Templar

"You are right, but there are so few trained wizards, those I know of are those we have killed. Even the Necromancer we brought down at Templesbury was a useless wizard, only knowing how to summon demons and Inferi..." spat the Serpent.

"Come, let us not despair, perhaps it is time to return to duelling and pick out the best fighters and those with potential and teach them. If someone tries Dark Magic and cannot resist the effects... Thus it is necessary to dissuade the use of such magic. Get us rooms Sal, I wish to walk." the Templar rose and strode out of the pub.

Harry's mind was awash with emotion, self loathing and a distinct hatred of those who preyed on the weak, his hatred for himself and the righteous hatred for his enemies fighting against one another. Snow was settling on the ground as Harry's chainmail and dragonhide clinked lightly as he walked around the village.

_Outside the city walls of Bath, a lone figure stood, swathed in black, a plain white cross adorning his torso._

"_Come out, outlaws, send any man you wish to challenge me, he will fall as so many before him."_

_Running out of the forest were five men, savages dressed in filthy hemp clothes. Cutting off any emotion, his bastard sword swung horizontally, one down, decapitated,. Lunge, two down. Block quarterstaff, cut, slash cut, quarterstaff destroyed. Lunge parry, riposte. Three down. Swing, thrust, cut. Arm removed, through the stomach, head removed. Four down. Block, cut, block, feint lunge! Five down._

_Within half an hour, near sixty men lay dead around him, in fairness, he hadn't used magic, but the sword tore swathes through the outlaws who had been raiding local merchants and farmers. Those that survived, he simply killed as they lay wounded on the blood soaked ground. Picking up a staff, a touch of wandless transfiguration and it had a flat spearhead._

_He hurled it with all his might and the leader of the bandits fell from a tree branch, the spear having passed through his torso._

Harry felt sick as he watched the memory flash past. Each face was there as he mercilessly cut them down, blood spraying everywhere, men writhing on the ground as he stabbed downward. He slowly lowered himself onto a bench, throwing the cloak backward, exposing the torso of his dragonhide and chainmail armour, the his infamous crest visible.

Harry pulled his stiletto from its sheathe and a whetstone from his belt and slowly began to run the whetstone up and down the edges of the blade. He barely looked up as someone settled on the bench next to him. Dark brown hair, blue eyes, was one of three sat at the table next to himself and Salazar.

"Tell me..." Harry said softly; "I am certain you would have overheard my conversation, I did little to keep it quiet and it is likely you recognise my crest... How can you sit with a man who is a monster, whose name is feared, who bears the blood of hundreds on his hands?"

"A man who retains his humanity is still a man, not a monster." replied the woman next to him.

"Be that as it may, I am surprised that any save Salazar would willingly associate with the Templar." Harry commented flatly.

"I willingly associate with a man who does what is right, who serves the people, protects the weak. The Templar may be well known and well feared, rightfully so, but he does what is right instead of what is easy." she responded immediately; "Tell me, were you serious about teaching magic?"

"I was, if I could have a hand in creating a land where no longer do people like myself bear the blood of hundreds on our hands before we have lived much more than two decades... If children were taught right from wrong, given morals and taught the responsibility of magic, taught to never serve the darkness, I would have had many less to kill. A single dark wizard has his minions, remove them and it is easier to kill him." Harry replied, lowering the hood of his cloak; "I am a rich man, I see no better purpose to spend my money than the development of the future of our world. You haven't told me your name..."

"Rowena Ravenclaw." she introduced as Harry's eyes widened very slightly.

"Arlyss FitzPotter, known by those close to me as Harry. My companion is Ares Salazar Slytherin. He doesn't use his first name." Harry said, brushing his lips on her hand.

"My friends, Godric and Helga, and I, have been travelling for some time, learning bits of magic here and there with the intent to pass it on to students. We need a school, we need teachers, it is a beautiful dream, but that is all I can see it as."

"Dreams are such wonderful and terrible things, inspiring, comforting, motivating, haunting, terrifying... While many dreams cannot come about, some aren't impossible. Mayhap I can assist you with your venture. For tonight, I recommend you sleep, I shall contemplate what to do." Harry said.

"You do not sleep?" asked Rowena.

"No, Miss Ravenclaw, I have sufficient mental control that I cannot sleep for more than a few hours. If Salazar is still in the inn, tell him I am occupied." Harry said as he rose from the bench, sheathing his stiletto.

He bowed slightly to Rowena and apparating away, forgetting the rarity of the skill in the 10th century. He landed in a corner of Diagon Alley, near the land salesman he had purchased the land where Templesbury Castle had been built. The shop was still open, despite the lateness of the hour as Harry strode in, with his hood covering his head, it's concealment charms hiding his face.

"Do you have any land for sale near Hogsmeade?" he barked.

"Yes my Lord Templar, we have a large stretch of land, including a small area of mountains, a magical forest and lake with a large patch of clear land between them, suitable for development." babbled the salesman nervously.

"Price?"

"For you, five hundred galleons my Lord."

Harry extracted the required sum from the vault pendant around his neck and threw it onto the desk. A few minutes later, he had the deeds signed for the estate in his name.

"And next time... stop bloody grovelling!" Harry barked irritably.

He apparated to the lawns at the front of Hogwarts that he remembered. Instead of the soaring towers and buttresses, it was simply a long stretch of land with a deep canyon-like river running through the centre. A few minutes of occlumency and Harry was able to perfectly recall the layout of Hogwarts castle as depicted by the Marauder's map. Recalling the rebuilding of Templesbury Castle after the Necromancer's siege, he was also able to remember the building charms they had employed, massively speeding up the creation of a building.

Running his wand along the ground in a rough square, Harry slowly drew it up, almost pulling the stone foundations that followed from the earth.

Picturing the rough, durable stone he wanted and the openings for windows, Harry slowly began drawing his wand across the foundations. After a few minutes, he raised it upward, pointing into the darkened sky. Ever so slowly, a wall with Gothic style windows rose from the foundations.

Finally, after nearly five hours of casting, a small, two story cloister had appeared from the ground, walkways and single rooms on the bottom and two sets of rooms on either side of a corridor on the second, reached by a single staircase. Exhausted, Harry apparated back to Hogsmeade, going up to one of the rooms which was evidently his by the white cross on the door under a notice-me-not charm keyed to not work against him.

Harry didn't bother changing his robes and simply collapsed onto the bed, allowing sleep to claim him.

The next morning, Harry spoke briefly to Rowena and asked her to gather her friends together as he went in search of Salazar. After ten minutes, he found him walking around the village;

"Salazar, mind apparating back to the inn, I have something to talk about."

They both vanished silently, reappearing in the Hog's Head inn where the three travellers were sat.

"Ladies, Gentlemen, I have a plot of land near here where I intend to build a school. A school to teach children to harness their magic. A school to teach morals, right from wrong, responsibility which comes with power and to dissuade the use of true Dark Magic. Would you be willing to join this venture?"

A few moments of silence followed by a resounding call of "Aye!" answered Harry.

**December, 992 AD**

After a year of hard work, the small cloister Harry had started with became a single building, roofed over, the whole thing full of rooms. A second, far larger cloister was built next to it, reaching four floors up, a basement lying beneath it and with two towers on one side of the cloister.

The great hall had taken months to create, the walls themselves were easily built, but the intricate architecture and structural integrity took a large amount of effort and two attempts.

_Harry and Salazar were stood in the great hall, a simple building of four walls, a roof and a window at one end. Curses flashed between them as they duelling. A long, agonised groan was all the warning Harry and Salazar had to apparate out as the magical output combined with too heavy a roof brought the great hall down in a pile of dusty rubble._

_It was early morning as Rowena left the small building where they were all living. Stretching out, she blinked twice and watched, horrified as the walls of the great hall bulged outward before collapsing, the roof plummeting downward into the rubble._

_Harry and Salazar appeared a few yards from her, sweating slightly, wands drawn. Harry was wearing a simple linen shirt while Salazar was as ever wearing his forest green robes. Evidently they had both been duelling;_

"_Harry, Sal, would you have any idea why the great hall is a pile of rubble." Rowena said sweetly as she sidled up to Harry and quickly drew his stiletto._

"_Err... no?" Salazar responded hopefully._

_Harry wrapped a firmly muscled arm around Rowena's waist and arm. A slight pressure on her wrist and the dagger fell from her hand._

"_Thanks Row sweetie." Harry whispered, kissing her on the cheek and apparating a short distance away._

_Rowena blushed deeply as Harry kissed her before rounding on him, dagger outstretched. No way was Rowena Ravenclaw going to admit she fancied him. It was only then that she realised that Harry was a short distance away and spinning the dagger she had taken in one hand and smirking._

With the use of buttresses around the hall's walls and many beams stretching across the roof and some heavy enchanting, the Great Hall stood proud, a smaller hall attached to it with a staircase leading up to the central tower and the cloister. Salazar took over the basement, tunnelling downward to create a final line of defence for Hogwarts while Rowena had set up her own rooms in the central tower.

Helga had sectioned off a corner of the first floor of the cloister, setting up a warm, comfortable living space for the students. Godric's rooms were directly above hers in one of the towers, Harry suspected that there was a secret way between the two areas. Harry had commandeered the upper part of the tower that was still vacated, knowing that the lower part would become the headmaster's office.

It was one morning, shortly after Harry's twenty-third birthday when the greatest event of his life occurred.

**August, 993 AD**

_Harry was sat astride Athelstan, gently trotting up the long path from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts. He'd decided to take an early morning ride and enjoy the cool, fresh air and the birdsong. As he rode up the lawn toward the castle, Harry made out a small figure sat, facing the castle._

_Quietly sliding from the saddle, Harry walked up to the figure, Athelstan quietly following behind him._

"_Beautiful is it not Harry?" said Rowena, looking up at the castle._

"_It is indeed, a masterpiece of five great friends, Rowena." Harry replied, wrapping an arm round her shoulder as Athelstan gently nuzzled her hair; "I don't know what would have become of me had I submitted to the whims of the Templar, thanks to you and Salazar especially, I survived myself. Remember what you said to me over a year ago, I believe it was 'A man who retains his humanity is still a man, not a monster', I have tried to live by that."_

"_You, Harry, are a wonderful person, you defend those weaker than yourself, you spend your money to educate young witches and wizards. Not to mention being incredibly handsome." Rowena replied, blushing slightly._

"_And you are also the wonderful person. Not to mention incredibly beautiful..." Harry replied softly._

_Rowena turned her cerulean blue eyes to look into Harry's emerald green eyes;_

"_I doubt I-"_

_Harry silenced her self-deprecating comment by pressing his lips against hers. Rowena hesitated a moment before returning the kiss, their lips meeting, an electric feeling of passion passing between the two._

"_Wow!" Rowena breathed as they broke the kiss._

"_One way to put it..." Harry commented._

"_Ah wonderful, the sarcastic, sharp tongued Harry returns." Rowena replied amusedly._

_Once again, Harry kissed her, a wildfire of pleasure and solidarity running through one another as the two halves met. After a few moments they broke the kiss._

"_What does that make us?" asked Rowena._

"_I don't mind as long as you are my love." Harry replied softly, allowing Rowena to lay her head onto his shoulder, the sunrise illuminating her beautiful features._

"_Row love, I ought to tell you this, Salazar knows the very basics but I was born in 1980 AD and came here a few months before my fifteenth birthday during a fight where I was hit by a killing curse which evidently had been contorted by the of two pieces of battle magic it passed through. While there are times I miss it, not having a murderous Dark Lord after you is good, I also don't know how I could return to my original time, it would take a large amount of immensely complicated Arithmancy and a runic ritual and some form of temporal anchor and I truly do not understand half of it and frankly, everything I want is here. You're here."_

_Harry shuffled backward a bit until he was leaning on Athelstan's warm flank and pulled Rowena into his lap and wrapped his cloak around both of them, warding off the morning chills. Life had taken a turn up for the books._

**September, 994 AD**

A year later and Hogwarts was administering to near a hundred students of various ages. Harry had taught much of what he knew to Godric, though he generally skipped over his darker curses. Rowena got the full benefit of his instruction in combat magic and the Mind Arts, and though she avoided using dark curses, she could fight with great effect and knew how to use those spells.

He had denied being one of the founders, not wanting to change history, though he didn't say that to anyone save Rowena, but at the insistence of the other founders, he was elected as Hogwart's first Headmaster.

"_Each of us shall take the students that most suit their personality!" Godric shouted happily; "I'll have the courageous, Helga take the hard working, Rowena those with immense intellects, Salazar those with cunning. Harry?"_

"_I don't particularly want to have my own house, having one of the reputed darkest wizards of the century as a house icon isn't overly intelligent 'Ric, what do I take, those with proficiency for Dark Magic and almost suicidal situations?" Harry commented._

"_Very well, all those in favour of making Harry the first Headmaster of Hogwarts?"_

_Immediately everyone put their hand up save Harry who simply thumped his head on the table. Repeatedly._

Salazar taught potions and wizarding history with the assistance of Helga who specialised in herbology and healing. Godric taught charms, transfiguration and assisted Harry in teaching defensive magic while Rowena worked on Runes and Arithmancy with the more advanced students. Harry made a breakthrough shortly after the beginning of the school year in the Mind Arts;

"_Rowena love, you know I taught you how to defend and attack mentally?"_

"_Yes..."_

"_I found mental links to other persons such as familiars and I worked out how to create a link which would allow some level of communication between the linked minds, from exchanging emotions, maybe images to possibly being able to mentally converse. I wondered if you'd want to try this with me." Harry said nervously, only for Rowena to leap up from her desk and slam her lips into his own._

"_I would love you to give us that." she replied._

_Falling into his mindscape, Harry made his way to the link centre, as he called it and pulled out a length of cord from the blue ball. Gently,he extended a mental probe into Rowena's mind. She lowered her barriers and allowed him to enter. A brief search and Harry located her link centre and connected the cord to her._

_Returning to the real world, Harry began sending emotions through the link he had established. Waves of love flowed through the bond to Rowena. He judged it was successful from the gasp she let out as the flow entered her mind. Knowing her habit of self-deprecation, he then began sending images of how he saw her, sapphire eyes, not murky blue, glossy, silky black hair, not dull, matted and colourless, her beautiful face, not overly angular but angelic, not lanky and skeletal but lithe and curvaceous._

_Once again, Rowena gasped slightly;_

"_Is that how you truly see me?" she asked._

"_Row love, never doubt yourself, you are my world." Harry replied mentally._

"_It worked! I love you Harry." Rowena said, throwing herself into Harry's embrace._

The five founders had performed a ritual of adoption, mutually becoming brothers and sisters, save for Harry and Rowena, Helga and Godric as they were both couples. Thus, Harry James Potter-Black became brother to Salazar Slytherin, Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff, who used her maiden name as her family was well known and respected.

Harry channelled the power generated from the adoption into the castle's wards, increasing the strength thousand-folds. Next to Salazar's chamber, Harry was working on his own project.

_In front of Harry was a long, gleaming metal cylinder, lying on it's side. Running into it was a pipe emerging from the wall. He had spent weeks carving intricate runes into the surface, principally water heating rune. At the top, a second pipe led upward to a second room. A staircase carved into the rock and inside was a second much shorter tank with a metal rod emerging from one side._

_In the room above was a final tank which had cooling runes carved into it and a pipe leading down to the first tank. The metal shaft emerging from the side of the second tank led into a room where it was attached to an incredibly rough metal wheel, it's sides carved with unbreakable and anti-erosion runes, while the surfaces of the wheel lay against a jagged diamond carved with the same runes, set on a pedestal carved with heat-to-magic transforming runes and channelling runes which would channel any magic produced into the wards._

_Harry filled the bottom tank with water by using repeated aguamenti charms. A single rune cluster activated the system, boiling the water in the bottom tank, the steam rose up to the turbine in the second tank, turning the millstone on it's metal shaft. The steam rose up through a one-way seal and was condensed back into water in the final tank before running back to the first tank._

_Harry was certain that the system would work properly and sure enough, a month after it was activated, the castle's wards which he himself had created, including some very lethal ones which only he could activate, were running at a level of strength previously unheard of. Unfortunately, the system had to be purged of water every month and restarted._

Shortly afterward, Harry was in the comfortable study in his own quarters with Rowena. His head was resting in her lap, eyes closed and enjoying the sensation of a hand being gently run through his hair when she asked;

"Love, you haven't told me much of your time before you came here, can you tell me anything of it?"

Harry mused for a moment, deciding what he could and couldn't reveal before slowly beginning;

"I was born in July 1980, one of my parents was a pureblood wizard while my mother was a muggleborn, said to be the brightest witch of her generation while my father's chosen profession was causing trouble. Both attended this school in Godric's house, as I did when I came here. While I am still unsure why, the Dark Lord of the time decided to attack my family and was removed from his body by a rebounding killing curse, due to my mother's sacrifice and, I suspect, a blood magic ritual... He survived, incorporeal. Unfortunately, my parents, who were using the Fidelius charm to hide, chose one friend as the secret keeper while spreading around that another was. Friend A betrayed them, framed Friend B for his murder and that of a dozen others and my parent's betrayal." Harry paused for a minute, using his occlumency to suppress his lingering anger and sorrow, despite it being over a decade since he saw the traitor.

"I was sent to my maternal aunt, a muggle, a bad one with a hatred of magic. Not something that was particularly prevalent then, partly due to the statute of secrecy consigning magic to children's stories as far as muggles are concerned. Aged eleven, here, I killed my Defensive Magic Professor when it turned out the incorporeal form of the Dark Lord inhabited him. Aged twelve, Salazar's basilisk was corrupted and set loose in the castle, though no one died, I ended up killing her. You are not to do anything to her as it is part of what made me me." Harry said sternly to Rowena.

"Third year, Friend B escapes high security gaol, dementors set on guard around the school, I learnt the patronus charm, encountered Friend B believing him to be my parent's betrayer and nearly killed him. It turned out Friend A had been living in my room as a friend's pet rat for three years, unfortunately due to another parental friend, werewolf and the best Defence Professor I ever had getting loose in his wolf form, Friend A escaped and Friend B had to go on the run. On a hippogriff. Who I'd rescued from execution. Using a Timeturner."

"Fourth year, a competition between schools was set up. I was entered into it despite being underage and supposedly the competition should only have three competitors, not four. Defence Professor was a maniac ex-Auror, or so we believed. He managed to get me to the last task of this competition after having me engage in a game of out-fly the dragon on a broom and swimming around the black lake. The last task he cleared the way for me through a maze, I only encountered a sense inversion charm, a boggart, a sphinx and a giant spider. Unfortunately I took the cup that was at the centre of the maze with the other Hogwarts competitor, we were portkeyed to Friend A and the Dark Lord who as I mentioned, his soul is immortal. My fellow competitor was immediately killed, the Dark Lord returned to a body and I barely escaped with my life. I returned to Hogwarts, the maniac ex-Auror was locked in his own trunk and was being impersonated by a supposedly dead maniac dark wizard. I returned to hateful muggle relatives, began studying, ended up with the fight which resulted in my ending up here. That was June 1995."

After divulging his life up until the temporal incident, Harry lay back in the sofa, having taken to conjuring more modern furniture for his private quarters. Eventually he drifted off to sleep, his head resting on Rowena's shoulder.

Quietly, Rowena slid from the sofa, allowing Harry to gently roll over so he was stretched lengthways across the sofa. Quickly making her way downstairs, she searched for Salazar, finding him in the dungeon, hunched over a potion he was brewing.

"Sal, can I speak to you?" she asked.

"Hmm... Give me a moment." he replied, stirring the potion several times before placing a lid on the cauldron and a stasis charm over it.

Seating himself on the table Salazar asked;

"You wanted to speak to me."

"Indeed. Harry has just shared with me his pre-temporal travel life. I won't betray his confidence by telling you much but it's bad. He ended up duelling a Dark Lord who has apparently got some form of immortality, though his body can be killed. I want him to go back and at least I accompany him. You've known him for longer than I have, fought with him, lived with him, what is your opinion?" Rowena said.

"I would accompany him in a moment. He often would space out when I first met him, the pain and suffering of his pre-time travel life still haunts him, I see it even now. He needs closure, even should we return here afterward." the Harry-twin answered; "If you can devise a method to take us to his time. I saw his notes on the idea of returning there once. It was rubbish to me but I remember certain points, there was 'Using the Summer Equinox 1995 as a temporal beacon' and something about 'Channelling magical reserves into a runic ritual'. Those are the parts I remember, though I also recall that he decided that the Summer Equinox wouldn't work..."

Four months later and Rowena had set up a ritual room, composed of three throne-like chairs in the centre of a massive spiral of runes. The runes were designed to drain power off the two ley lines which crossed over beneath the school to activate and power themselves, holding the subjects of the ritual in unconscious limbo before releasing them at the Autumn Equinox of 1995.

It was after this was completed that she and Salazar approached Harry on the subject.

_Harry was scribbling through another piece of paperwork for his seats on the Wizard's Council as representative of the Crown, representative of Hogwarts and as the Earl of Templesbury when someone knocked firmly on the door of his study._

"_Come in!" he called._

_Harry looked up to see a somewhat uncomfortable looking Salazar and Rowena and he frowned slightly._

"_Harry love;" Rowena began, then faltered._

"_As Rowena was trying to say, she had given me a very basic background on your pre-temporal life, as simple as 'duelling a semi-immortal Dark Lord' and 'it was bad'. We want you to return to your own time and we want to accompany you."_

"_Hmmph... I looked at going back near a decade ago, it would require a rune cluster fed of a ley line. I couldn't begin to create the rune cluster, despite the fact I could take a mastery in runes for warding. It would require a temporal event to act as a beacon and that in itself would require specially created runes based of Arithmancy beyond my comprehension. I couldn't do it, much as I would like to finish things up there. Frankly I had hoped to hang up my sword." Harry said, gesturing at the pair of blades on their stand on the windowsill._

_Harry looked over the two founders again, they were looking even more uncomfortable;_

"_You've already got a way to do this ready, don't you?" he said, watching as they nodded before sighing; "Row sweetheart, I wish you could have told me about this. Sal, you are my brother, Row you are my love, let nothing come between us. I'll go along with this if someone else tells Godric. I don't want to be on the wrong end of his temper by telling him; 'Oh by the way 'Ric, we're going a thousand years into the future and leaving you to manage the school. Have a nice day'. He can be downright vicious with that sword..."_

At midnight, Harry having sent off a letter making Godric proxy Castellan of Hogwarts to the Wizard's Council and having packed everything he felt of use to him, including his license to hold the Hogwarts, Crown and Templesbury seats in perpetuity, his Battle Mage license, a large collection of potions Salazar had made. All of his weapons, the hundreds of wands he had won went into a trunk with his clothes.

Finally, they were all shrunk and pocketed, he made a deposit of five-hundred thousand galleons to his Gringotts account, looking forward to the interest made and paying a goblin family 0.2% commission on any income from investments made over the next millennium to manage his account.

Having briefly visited the Chamber of Secrets to activate his ward-powering system, Harry made his way up to the surface. Godric stood silently in a corner of the ritual room, shoulders squared, stood tall, a bastion amongst the sadness and tears that each shed, a single tear trickling down his cheek.

Harry had agreed to let both Rowena and Salazar come as the only thing truly necessary was for Voldemort to exist for his future to be intact. He had long since worked out that Voldemort was the descendant of Salazar Slytherin, _not _his elder brother,Ares Salazar Slytherin, the founder of Hogwarts.

**September, 995 AD**

Finally, the three settled on the stone-carved thrones and watched as Godric slowly bent down and placed his wand on the single rune which would activate the rune spiral and send the three into the future.

What seemed like moments later, though it was actually around a thousand years unconscious in limbo, Harry, Salazar and Rowena awoke on the thrones in the ritual room which was identical to how they had left it, save for the absence of Godric and Helga.

"Shall we, my dear Serpent?" Harry asked mockingly as he flicked a wand to change into his black Templar battlerobes.

"Indeed, my dear Templar." replied Salazar, rising out of his seat and using a switching spell to wear his forest-green battlerobes.

A moment's pause and Harry switched one of his spare battlerobes onto Rowena, not wanting her to be hurt because she was wearing her normal, dark blue dress. He then drew the stiletto and cut his index finger slightly, placing the wound against the door. Several loud clicks and the door swung open for the first time in a thousand years.

"Shall we go see the Headmaster?" Harry said as they left the room.

Harry cast a Tempus charm as they walked along the deserted corridor;

**'12:15 September 23rd 1995'**

"Excellent, all the brats will be in lunch right now!" Harry said.

"Harry, why do you call them brats?" Rowena asked.

"You never had to teach Cecil and Selwyn at the same time Rowena dearest." Salazar replied for Harry.

"Anyway, we see the Headmaster, Salazar, you and I need to go see the current monarch with our Crown Licenses, I'll check on my castle, I expect my wards are still working. Before we left, I set up a system here that, though it needs monthly reactivation, it generates magic." Harry said as they approached the gargoyle he had placed there to guard his office and his private quarters; "Hey Gutstomper, how's life? Mind if we head in?"

"Harry, why oh why did you name your guardian Gutstomper?" Salazar asked.

"Because Goblin names are brilliant like that." Harry replied as the statue bowed and stepped aside.

The trio strode up the revolving staircase and halted outside the door leading to Harry's old public office. Harry lifted the door knocker and slammed it down twice.

"Come in!" called the recognisable voice of Albus Dumbledore.

Harry threw the door wide and strode in, followed by Salazar and Rowena, all three with faces concealed by hooded cloaks with concealment charms.

"Afternoon Professor." he called out.

Dumbledore was stood in a moment, wand outstretched at the three hooded figures;

"Who are you?!"

"Lots of people, I have multiple names I go by depending on the mood... The Templar, Arlyss FitzPotter, the Earl of Templesbury, Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived..." Harry replied blandly, earning him a swipe across the back of his head from Rowena; "I believe I even once successfully impersonated Salazar Slytherin..."

"I don't remember that!" Salazar commented.

"Oh, you wouldn't Sal, I put you on the private infirmary under a coughing elixir and then taught your potions class how to make a flatulence solution that looked and smelt just like the cough remedy... I then told them to administer it to you, they never realised it wasn't a cough remedy..." Harry responded.

"Harry?" said Dumbledore, dumbstruck

"That's me!" Harry said, throwing back his hood.

"What happened to you, my boy?"

"Long story including a magical accident caused by contact with a killing curse which responded badly to being in contact with the Cataegis de Sagittæ and Arcticum Tempestate spells..." he replied; "Oh, my friend, brother and apprentice all rolled into one, Ares Salazar Slytherin and my other half Rowena Ravenclaw. We didn't have terms like boyfriend and girlfriend back in August 993 when we got together..."

By now, Harry was having a hard time concealing his amusement underneath his carefully created occlumency shields as Dumbledore froze completely. Harry conjured an armchair such as he usually had in his private quarters and sank into it, pulling Rowena down into his lap.

"When I was headmaster, the biggest level of surprise I showed was a single raised eyebrow. Standards have fallen." Harry continued blithely.

"Harry love, did any of our students come into your office with two apparently legendary figures and declares himself to be former headmaster and one of the most infamous dark wizard hunters of history." Rowena chastised.

"Hmm... I can think of worse company to be in though Row love." Harry whispered, sliding back her hood and kissing her lightly on the lips.

A gagging sound emerged from under Salazar's hood;

"Just because I get the girls Sal..." Harry commented; "That reminds me, have you got your Battle Mage license?"

"I do. And I was getting girls long before you... Remember about a month after I met you at the duelling tournament in York?" Salazar responded.

"Harry my boy, what happened, you look much older, like a more aristocratic James...?" Dumbledore finally managed to say.

"I got dumped in June 985, met Salazar about a year later, studied for a few years and duelled on the professional circuit as the Serpent and the Templar. Travelled as Battle Mages under King Æthelred for a while before going on our own travels. Eventually I met Row, Helga and 'Ric in the Hog's Head in December 991, became headmaster for the first year of Hogwarts' opening, that was 994. OH BUGGER! I forgot to resign as headmaster and they need a sixty percent vote of the founders including myself to remove a headmaster according to the charter we signed... I'm still officially head..." Harry said, trailing off at the realisation that he had forgotten something so important.

"Harry, I have bad news, your Aunt, Uncle and cousin were killed in the attack on Privet Drive and officially you are dead. The Minister launched a post-mortem smear campaign against you and a campaign against myself. He's also attempting to seize the Potter vaults and properties." Dumbledore continued; "Fudge has pushed one of his loyalists onto us as Defence Professor who refuses to teach anything beyond Ministry sanctioned definitions of various kinds of magic."

"Luckily, I have perpetual license to act as Castellan of Hogwarts to the Ruling Council, the Wizengamot I believe it is now, and as Royal representative and my own seat as Earl of Templesbury. The Ministry won't be a problem and while my _relatives'_ deaths are unfortunate, they never were anything less than hateful to me. How's Sirius?" Harry replied.

"He's living under Fidelius at the Black Family Townhouse at 12 Grimmauld Place."

Harry's eyes slid out of focus for a moment as he absorbed the knowledge hidden by the Fidelius.

"Excellent, I'll go over there and see him. I'll start up my ward-renewal system, Salazar, you and I need to get our commissions reactivated which requires a Royal Audience then we can start killing off the Death Eaters. That reminds me, were there many dead Death Eaters during their attack on Privet Drive?"

"My dear boy, is it necessary to kill them, surely we can persuade them to come over to the light? Our investigations at Privet Drive revealed five dead Death Eaters including Lucius Malfoy and Nott Senior. I'm calling a meeting of the Order for half an hour's time, though it will probably begin in less than that time." Dumbledore responded.

"Yes it's necessary. Once you start using Dark Magic, if they can't use fend off the effects as the caster, the only way to stop their Dark Arts use is death. That's why I refused to teach Godric the Dark Arts, he wasn't able to prevent the effects of anything but minor dark spells." Harry said, frowning; "And don't try that 'You're going bad' rubbish on me. Between Salazar and I, we're responsible for a lot less Dark Magic in the world. His mother and little brother were going to sell copies of books from the Slytherin library before we stole them and drove a burning hay-cart into the manor. If you'll excuse me..."

Harry rose from his seat, depositing Rowena on her feet before placing his wand on the obsidian and ivory Templar ring and called out;

"Study stairs!"

A circular stone staircase slowly descended from the ceiling of the Dumbledore's office, finally stopping as it hit the floor with a soft 'thump'. Harry strode up the stairs, followed by Rowena and Salazar. Dumbledore attempted to follow but was thrown back by a bolt of lightning from the wards protecting the stairs.

"There's a reason our rooms are called private, Headmaster." Rowena commented before following her love and brother.

Once they were behind the numerous wards of Harry's room, unchanged from the time he'd vacated it, Salazar said;

"_Our_ rooms Rowena?"

"Yes Salazar dear;" Rowena said sweetly; "I began living with Harry when you blew up my rooms with that idiotic potion you tried making about two years ago. Even a dunderhead knows that mixing asphodel and wormwood without a stabilizing ingredient will cause a large explosion..."

"Indeed Sal, remember the bandit camp near Lincoln and the cart loaded with those two and heated water... We destroyed a hundred yard radius around us in a fireball." Harry reminded him; "We had a horrible potions professor here, in my first year he told me that if you added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood would create the draught of the living dead, I may go and blow up his classroom at some point just to spite him."

Harry was rewarded for his snide comment with a smack over the back of the head from Rowena as he made his way to his desk, a beautiful piece of red-coloured wood with the soft belly-hide of Salazar's basilisk laid into the top. He quickly laid a large pile of papers on the desk, having retrieved them from one of the many pockets he had enchanted with internal expansion charms.

"God, I forgot how many perpetual titles I have..." Harry sighed; "Lord Potter, Lord Black, Lord FitzPotter; Earl of Templesbury, Master Royal Battle Mage, Master Duellist, Master Huscarl, Castellan of Hogwarts, Royal Representative to the Wizard's Council and I even forgot to resign as Headmaster of Hogwarts and according to the charter, I am still Headmaster as neither of you voted for my removal... I was even commander of the Order of the Phoenix for Eastern England alongside Aldred of Wessex for Western England."

"Come on love, we've got things to do, no use moping." Rowena said, sitting on the edge of his desk.

"Hmmph. I need to reactivate my Battle Mage commission, I'll probably not bother re-earning my masteries, I'll take at least the FitzPotter-Templesbury, Potter and Black seats on the Wizengamot, but I'll leave the rest for the moment with the exception of the Order commission if it is necessary."

A couple of waves of Harry's wand and the rings he had concealed for a decade were revealed, the Potter and Black rings appeared alongside the FitzPotter-Templesbury ring, the Templar ring, the Hogwarts ring, the Order of the Phoenix ring and the Royal Favour ring.

"Grab on!" Harry said, waiting until Rowena and Salazar were holding onto one arm and drawing his wand, pressing it to the Black family ring and calling out; "Black townhouse!"

The three figures appeared in the hallway of a dim, gloomy house, dusty cobwebs stretching from the peeling walls. In unison, the three pulled up their hoods.

"Reminds me of the Slytherin manor before we burnt it down, the darkness makes me feel uneasy." Salazar said, sounding uncomfortable.

"Don't worry, if I get the chance, I'll cleanse this place, though I won't demolish it as somewhat historic and would take too much effort to bring down the entire terrace, it wasn't hard to drive a burning hay-cart into the Slytherin Manor but that would be harder to do here. Come Serpent, Eagle, shall we?" Harry said, slowly drawing one of the many wands he could use.

"Certainly Templar dearest." Rowena responded sarcastically. Unfortunately her comment awoke a painting hidden behind thick curtains which flew open;

"FILTH, BLOOD TRAITORS, BEASTS, HALFBREEDS IN THE HOUSE OF BLACK! BEGONE AND TAKE YOUR WHORE WITH YOU!" screeched the painting.

Harry reacted after a moment, the one way to guarantee death with Harry was to insult or hurt Rowena. A small vial of liquid flew through the air, smashing against the painting and burning holes through it.

"One of my favourite inventions, concentrated and magically-charged sulphuric acid and basilisk venom compound combined with a self-containment enchantment, remember it Row? I managed to make a way for the liquids to stay together without any bad reactions..." Harry said grimly; "Shouldn't have called my Rowena a whore eh?"

They proceeded through to the kitchen where the quiet murmur of voices could be heard. Dumbledore portkeyed in as the three stepped through the door. A small piece of intent-based magic from Harry caused their cloaks to billow slightly. While Rowena's power was somewhat less than Harry and Salazar, she made an effort to exude a subtle aura as the two men released any constraints from their magic.

Immediately upon passing over the threshold of the kitchen where the meeting was, a stunning spell rocketed toward Harry from Alastor Moody. An absent wave of his hand blocked the spell and bound Moody in ropes, tying him to his chair. Seated around a long table were Snape, Moody, McGonagall, Sirius, Remus, Fleur, Arthur, Molly, Bill and Charlie Weasley and several others that Harry didn't recognise.

"Dumbledore, keep a leash on your attack-dogs." Salazar sneered as Harry released Moody.

"Yes... Well, an event has occurred that may change the course of the war with these three joining the cause. These are-" Dumbledore said.

"Don't bother Dumbledore, the memories of our earlier conversation have been sealed away, you cannot speak of it." Harry said.

Predictably, Snape spoke up;

"And what do these three have to offer that we don't already have, they don't even look that old." he said sneering.

"Biologically, all three of us are around twenty-five to thirty years old;" Harry replied; "But who do you think suppressed the Necromancer's of Carlisle in 991 AD. Myself and the Serpent."

"Actually Templar, we didn't so much suppress them but simply massacred their minions and killed anyone who dabbled in Blood and Death Magic. That and also Grease ball, it was between the two of us that we destroyed Slytherin manor in December 986 when my dear Templar drove a burning hay-cart into the manor after I retrieved the library." Salazar commented.

"Serpent, do you remember when I was awarded perpetual command of the Order of the Phoenix in the Blood Mage uprising of Norwich in 989, two things I hate, Necromancers and Blood Mages and anything combining the two. That was the worst fight, the combined Blood Mage and Necromancer Irwin of Norwich. He somehow was able to resist most of my curses until I finally brought him down with a spray of killing curses." Harry replied, enjoying the looks of shock on the Order member's faces.

Rowena listened with interest, knowing next to nothing about the Serpent and the Templar save for well-known rumours that had circulated the country before interrupting;

"Serpent, Templar, you can reminisce about the various wars you fought in later. We have one now to deal with."

"Yes Eagle dearest." Salazar and Harry replied in unison.

"Utterly impossible!" Snape spluttered.

"Serpent and I have our Battle Mage licenses signed by King Æthelred in very early 988 AD. Or I have the certification of my masteries in runic magic, species care, warding, ward breaking, Arithmancy, defensive magic, offensive magic, Dark Arts, transfiguration, swordsmanship and duelling, all signed in the latter half of the 10th century." Harry replied.

"You're a dark wizard!" screeched someone.

"Excellent! Give that moron a cookie!" Salazar cackled exuberantly; "It took you that long to realise? Between snogging sessions with Eagle, Templar kills Dark Wizards. Fight fire with fire."

"Get laid Serpent. Don't worry, I have no intention of going on a murderous rampage." Harry added as people began to edge away; "I have never killed anyone who didn't deserve it. Necromancers, Blood Mages and abusers of Dark Magic along with those who needlessly prey on those weaker than themselves are the only types I kill. That and Death Eaters that get on my bad side." he finished, looking straight at Snape.

"That and you are sole commander of the Order as I suspect Edgar of Wessex has long since passed on, leaving command of the western section of the Order to you along with the eastern section which you already commanded. We had fifty mounted mages and a thousand Huscarls under your command back during the wars. Shame we don't have that many now;" Salazar commented; "It's like the who's who of the retirement club and a handful of people I would even consider training for combat."

"Oh, my apologies to the owner of this dump, some painting in the hallway called Eagle a whore and I may or may not have taken offence and thrown a combination of magically-charged concentrate of sulphuric acid and basilisk venom at it..." Harry said, not sounding at all repentant.

Harry held a second vial of his creation at eye level; "One of my favourite creations, venom from Salazar's basilisk, assistance with charging the ingredients while maintaining a stable state from Rowena and Helga constantly reminding us to eat... Godric was awful at potions, one time I let him in my lab, he was five seconds away from destroying the main cloister and collapsing the central tower of Hogwarts when I checked on him."

"What can you provide to the war effort?" asked one of the unknown members.

"Well, we seek out the Death Eaters homes, burn them to the ground. Also I may break into Azkaban and kill off any Death Eaters within to prevent the Dark Lord breaking them out.

"How do you expect to break into Azkaban?" questioned another disbelievingly.

"Templar put the wards on that place." Salazar replied; "We built it to spread the delusion that we actually bothered taking prisoners amongst the people instead of simply killing them off."

"Lupin, Black, Drawing Room, now!" Harry barked, deciding that nothing else was to be gained by remaining in the meeting.

He strode out of the kitchen, followed by his companions and more hesitantly, Sirius and Remus. A short flight of stairs led up to the ground floor from the kitchen which was sunken into the ground. A second flight lead up to the first floor and the musty, dust covered drawing room.

After absently cursing a grandfather clock which had the temerity to fire several metal bolts at him as he entered, Harry effortlessly conjured a comfortable armchair. He collapsed backwards into the seat, reining in his magic and slumping tiredly in the chair.

"Was all that true?" Remus asked hesitantly.

Harry flicked his wand several times, throwing up several powerful privacy wards.

"Aye, all of it. I hate the Templar mask, it reminds me of the blood on my hands. While I claim that it was all for the betterment of the world, it still sickens me. I have memories which would break a normal man..."

"_Templar!"_

"_Indeed, ready to face judgement Irwin?" Harry replied coldly._

"_Do you not fear me? Are you not afraid of death by my hands?"_

"_I fear two things. I fear my own fall to the darkness and I fear fear itself." Harry said calmly, leaning slightly on his sword with it's tip embedded in the scorched and churned mud; "You fear death, you fear judgement, you fear your victims do you not? You shall have to face your fears and your maker soon."_

_Strewn around him were the brutally mutilated and immolated corpses of hundreds, maybe thousands of Inferi. Between him and the wizard were easily four hundred men. The stench of rotted flesh, burning flesh and sulphur sickened him, glaring at the black robed wizard who had stolen the deceased from their peaceful rest for his own uses._

"_I have no intention of facing the maker! I shall discover immortality! It shall be mine!" screamed Irwin._

_Harry immediately turned his body, letting a curse hurtle past him. At his side was Salazar and five mages, facing a force far larger than their own, having already fought the Inferi horde for hours. Launching into an attack, Harry and Salazar began casting massively overpowered blasting curses, obliteration curses and cutting curses at the men in front of them._

_Soon, Harry was casting from his left hand, cutting a bloody swathe through the dark robed enemies with his bastard sword in his right hand. Several exploded into a mist of blood as an obliteration curse slammed into them, while Harry cut down two men with efficient sword thrusts. Salazar was fighting differently, stood like a tree or a rock in the centre of the pitted and scorched battlefield, a wall of bodies lying about him._

_Fiendfyre incinerated a small group as they cornered one of his mages. Harry watched as a sickly yellow curse hit one of his men. The incurable flesh flaying curse, he would die in an hour in great pain. Full of pity, Harry fired a killing curse, ending the life of the mage. That was all he was, a mage, he no longer had a name. He was a statistic, a body to bury._

_Red tinged his vision as Harry turned. Dozens of different spells sprayed from him, tearing apart his enemies. His aura sprung up a localised storm around him, any curses fired at him were simply absorbed into the aura. No curse he fired failed to find a target despite the immense speed of his casting. Victims fell with brutal injuries, others simply collapsed as their organs ceased to work or ceased to exist as dark curse after dark curse slammed into them. _

_Harry dropped two minions flanking his ultimate target with killing curses. It took him ten minutes to gain no ground on the crazed Mage as hundreds of curses were shielded, deflected or dodged. Finally, Harry saw an opportunity, a small animation spell and a body grabbed the wizard's ankle as he fired a wide fan of killing curses ahead of him._

_The life slid from the Necromancer's eyes as they fell open in shock, glazing over. He slowly sank to the ground, landing like a discarded scarecrow._

"_Bastard, rot in hell for perverting magic, for disturbing the dead and for those whose bodies you have defiled and... used for your sick cause! And finally, rot for over a hundred of my men you killed before defiling their bodies with black magic." Harry spat._

"Love, what is it?" Harry heard as he returned from his memories.

"Sorry Row love, old memories. The final fight with Irwin of Norwich, at least a thousand Inferi and four hundred thralls and minions against myself, Sal and five mages of the Order. He ambushed us as we rode toward Lowestoft to deal with some raiders. I lost over a hundred men to the bastard during a night ambush as we rode through a valley." Harry said, pained; "We were riding hard for Lowestoft to dispose of some raiders and I kept our men moving. Had we encamped, I might not have lost near two hundred men in a single night, they were massacred as we rode. Sal, myself and around forty mages survived. We lost nearly all them in the final battle. I took the loss of nearly two hundred men rather personally, that is the only occasion I have submitted to the blood rage. Only myself, Sal and two others survived out of the forty I led into battle."

"Why didn't you tell me of this before Harry?" Rowena asked softly.

"It is truly the fabric of nightmares, the essence of terror. Imagine being so outnumbered where the chances of survival were minimal, were your own friends, allies and students were turned into mindless corpses to be set on you like rabid attack dogs. That is why I never told you. Salazar and I both are haunted by our demons, the men we have killed and seen killed, for good and for bad."

Salazar nodded sadly as Harry continued;

"One of my mages took an incurable flesh flaying curse, he'd die in immense pain after an hour... I turned my own wand on him and killed him. I never remember those who died under me, it is too painful, often they were friends, comrades, apprentices. I try to avoid remembering that battle, but, from my memories, I killed easily two hundred men before I got to Irwin. Each man that the Blood Mage and Necromancer killed was avenged by my hand. What truly sickened me was that he used the men I lost as Inferi. That was when I began killing abusers of Dark Magic on principle. I was nearly nineteen at the time."

Horrified silence reigned as the two men and Rowena paled, never having heard this, despite her loving relationship with Harry, he rarely spoke about his life before Hogwarts. The two men were sickened that any man could do this to his fellow man and that it fell to a nineteen year-old to stop him.

"We were stood in a field outside Norwich, I was with Salazar and forty other men when Irwin appeared. He summoned his minions and the Inferi. He was overconfident. Within a few hours, every single Inferius was destroyed, Fiendfyre, Warfire, Dragon's Fire and Black Fire along with the more destructive spells. I lost over thirty men during the battle. We finally faced off with the bastard. He had four hundred minions between us and him, it was when I was forced to kill my own mage that I lost it and submitted to the blood rage. I remember the stench of rotting and burning flesh, the coppery smell of blood and the sulphuric smell of scorched earth. I lost track of time and tore through their ranks like a scythe through wheat."

Silence reigned for a few more minutes before Salazar spoke up

"You're sure we should do this, Templar?" said Salazar quietly, clearly as effected as Harry was by the memory.

"Indeed Salazar, I would happily trust either of these men with my life." Harry replied.

A few moments of silence reigned before each of the three slowly lowered their hoods. Remus and Sirius watched as their guests revealed themselves. Beneath the hoods of the first two. were the almost identical men, Templar and Serpent, long black hair tied back, a long scar across the cheek of one as the only distinctive mark. The third was a beautiful woman with sapphire eyes, silky black hair, a lithe frame and a beautiful, elegant and slightly aristocratic face. Then, one of the men pushed aside his hair, revealing a paper-thin scar in the shape of a lightning bolt.

"Gentlemen, may I introduce my best friend, brother and apprentice, Ares Salazar Slytherin and my companion, Rowena Ravenclaw-"

"Kissing partner!" Salazar coughed.

Showing a bit of humour, Harry replied; "Just because I get the girl Salazar... Anyway, apart from when you were drunk after the tournament in York, you've spent a decade without a girl... Anyway, I have gone by many names... including the Earl of Templesbury, Lord FitzPotter, Arlyss FitzPotter, the Templar... Harry Potter."

"Harry?" breathed Remus.

"Indeed." Harry replied, concealing his emotions behind his occlumency and closing his eyes.

Moments later, he was crushed in a two-way hug from Remus and Sirius;

"What happened to you pup?" Sirius asked.

"A temporal incident caused by the result of the magical interference of a killing curse as it passed through two pieces of ancient battle magic causing me to end up in 985..." Harry replied dryly from between the two men; "You guys want to get out of this dump?"

"We'd love to cub, but Sirius is still a wanted man and we're under orders to remain here." Remus said.

"As members of the Order, you take instructions from her commander. In this case, me. Dumbledore hasn't got the Phoenix ring, he isn't commander in any way, shape or form." said Harry.

"He'll try and stop us or at the least, he'll retrieve us from wherever we go." Sirius said sadly, not missing the grin on his godson's other half's face which was not a nice grin but one which terrified him.

"Sirius, there is a reason Harry and Salazar earned the titles of most feared wizards of the turn of the 11th century... During a practice duel they managed to accidentally demolish Hogwart's Great Hall..." Rowena commented.

In unison, the two men shouted; "It wasn't my fault!"

"That reminds me. I own the land Hogwarts is built on, if Dumbledore tries to interfere... Also, I never ceased being Headmaster and Commander of the Order, so if he causes problems... Anyway, Templesbury castle withstood a two week siege with two sixteen year-olds defending it. With two Battle Mages, you two and Rowena, nobody is getting in." Harry commented; "Remus, Sirius, I will be honest with you. Over the last decade, I have become a cold bastard, I am not a particularly nice person, I have told you of a single experience I have had. If you want to still know me, I will likely stay this way. I don't know if, when the war ends, I'll ever return to who I once was... Maybe I'll go back to being a teacher, by far the best time of my life."

"Harry, whatever you may have done, as long as you don't surrender to the darkness, you are still our pup... just a bit older." Sirius reassured him.

"Fully grown, vicious, ruthless alpha male pup with more knowledge of combat than your average Dark Lord..." Harry replied dryly.

"How long do you think this war is going to last?" Remus asked.

"I don't know. If Snape tells us when there is a big Death Eater commune at somewhere like Malfoy Manor, we just go and torch the place with Fiendfyre. Unfortunately, if my theory is correct, Voldemort has used one of the worst kinds of Black Soul Magic to ensure his soul doesn't pass on. Salazar and I got a few books on the subject from Slytherin Manor..." Harry replied.

"That was before he drove a hay-cart full of dried grass and barrels of lamp-oil through the back wall of the manor..." Salazar added; "Never liked my family. Bunch of idiotic purist bigots."

"Gather round!" Harry said.

The four stood around Harry, placing their hands on his shoulders as Harry placed his wand against the Templar ring and called out;

"Templesbury; Activate!"

The five landed twenty yards from an impressive fortress made of yellow coloured stone, seated atop the hill. The curtain wall extended a significant area around the hilltop with the keep in the centre and a gatehouse with two D-shaped towers facing them.

Harry flicked his wand at Rowena, Sirius and Remus before pressing it against the ring again, allowing them access to the castle. A few mental commands lifted the immensely powerful stasis on the fortress and the portcullis rose into it's place in the gatehouse above the arch as the gates swung open, hitting the stone of the archway with a loud thunder.

"You're all keyed into the wards now so you won't die in several different ways the moment you cross the ward boundary." Harry announced flippantly.

"I almost don't want to know Harry, but what wards are on this place?" Sirius asked.

"Fire suppression, climate control, anti-pest, the usual."

"Harry..." wheedled Sirius.

"Okay Padfoot, at the moment it is running moderate wards, so decapitation, heart attack, dismembering, obliteration wards. Five different forms of lightning ward and a few nastier ones I am not going to comment on." Harry said; "We had a bad experience with a Necromancer so I added a lot of nasties. There is also a chamber beneath the castle which I set up as a personal safari park and I can move the animals up to the estate to defend it should it become necessary."

"What is it and what animals do you have?"

"Basically it's a massively expanded space that feels like the outdoors with a radius of about five miles when I created it. It has an enchanted roof which acts as the sky, lots of grass and various habitats. I kept a few basilisks, a couple of breeding pairs of various dragons which are extinct in the wild... Then there are also some Chimeras, half a dozen Cerberi, a Hydra, a few Minotaur, some Nemean Lions, a few Sphinx, there are also a few species of Phoenix who we rescued from a poacher and a whole squadron of Griffins. I could Portkey people into the reserve, feed the dragons... Actually, I wonder how Boris is doing?"

"Boris?" asked Remus, dreading the answer.

"My pet cat." Harry replied calmly.

"Harry's pet Nundu. Got him as a cub off a rare creatures poacher we disposed of." Salazar added helpfully; "You forgot the Salamanders, the Rocs, the Thunderbirds..."

"The shadow wolves, the Fenris wolves, the Grims, the Pegasi, the Unicorn and that weird Pegasus-Unicorn hybrid." Harry continued blithely as they walked toward the gatehouse; "Don't think I only have magical animals, I have quite a few creatures I knew would become extinct or extremely rare in the next thousand years. I've got a few breeding pairs of Caspian tigers, some Black Rhinos and a few other species."

After a few moments silence, Rowena enquired;

"Harry dearest, when were you going to inform me of these pets? Also, how are you sure they are still alive?"

"I rather forgot to tell you Row love, I know they are still alive as they're fed the Elixir of Life by the elves, who also drink it." he replied.

"You have a philosopher's stone?" Sirius said disbelievingly.

"Potions accident, I was combining nundu's blood, dragon's saliva and basilisk venom. Result, one massive fireball which destroyed everything in the laboratory except the cauldron it was in. I worked out what it was when the cauldron turned into gold. I ordered the elves to drink the elixir and feed my pets it."

"Harry, when did you get the chance to visit Africa, some of those species you didn't get from the poacher?" Salazar asked.

"So sue me, I was bored and had a Timeturner which I powered off the ley lines. I took a year out to stock up my little collection." Harry replied.

The five walked through the incredibly thick arch and immediately ground to a halt, save Harry who continued forward as an enormous, grey coloured leopard bounded around the keep, digging enormous furrows in the grass as it skidded to a halt in front of Harry.

As the cat rolled over on his back, Harry jumped inbetween the cat's paws which wrapped around him.

"Everyone meet Boris! Boris, you know Sal, the female is Rowena, the wolf one is Remus and the other is Sirius, please avoid killing them." Harry called out happily from the bear (Nundu) hug he was being held in.

"Isn't he just so cute?" Harry commented as he picked himself up and dusted off his robes.

Salazar quietly commented; "Boris is a cross between Harry's best friend, his little brother and his child. Don't worry, Nundu's breath is something that Boris can control, he only uses it when he wants to. Just never attack Harry because Boris will hunt you to the ends of the earth and kill you, he loves Harry."

"Come on everyone, let's head inside!" Harry shouted happily as he leapt onto the Nundu's back and charged off in the direction of the keep.

Salazar shook his head in amusement; "Boris is the one of the few people Harry will willingly confide in, especially with my own habit of making sarcastic comments aimed at him. That blasted nundu probably knows more about Harry than any other entity on this earth. It's one of his most annoying habits including riding his Firebolt through Hogwart's corridors in front of the students, behaviour unbefitting of the Headmaster and building a girl's garderobe over the main entrance to my chamber."

A few minutes later and the four found Harry lying with his back against the nundu's flank, eyes closed, enjoying the noontide sun.

"Sal, I had a bit of an idea, remember the genetic modification potion we created... What do you think about combining runespoor heads, basilisk eyes, Fire Phoenix travel with an Iberian Serpent Dragon. That would be a fun pet."

"No no and no Harry. I said this the last time you proposed something like this. Wasn't it crossbreeding Boris with a Cerberus to get a three-headed Nundu or was it the horse breeding idea... Wait... Athelstan isn't a simple Friesian is he?" said Salazar.

Sheepishly, Harry replied; "No, Athelstan is part Thracian Mare, part Night Mare and part Clydesdale."

Sirius and Remus exchanged glances while Rowena simply sighed in exasperation;

"Don't worry, I'm not mad, I'm just a Potter, my father was into pranks, mine are generally not intentional, like destroying the Great Hall at Hogwarts, accidentally creating a Philosopher's Stone, even getting Boris was accidental, he jumped into the hood of my hood and stayed there until Salazar noticed him a few hours later. Though I did build a girl's bathroom on top of the entrance to Salazar's chamber."

Harry rose from the ground and pushed open the heavy wooden door guarding the entrance and stepped in. Immediately an elf appeared, wearing a chainmail hauberk and brandishing a small throwing axe like it were a great Dane axe.

"WHO IS YOU?!" he shouted.

"Stand down Walter. It is I, Arlyss FitzPotter, the Templar, Earl of Templesbury, Lord Potter, Lord FitzPotter and Lord Black."

"And I, Ares Salazar Slytherin, the Serpent, Baron of Templesbury and Lord Slytherin."

"Who is your guests my Lord?" asked the elf, visibly relaxing.

"My companion the Lady Rowena, and my guests Sirius Black of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and Remus Lupin, Elder of Lupin." Harry replied.

"Very well my Lord, I will prepare quarters for Misters Lupin and Black and clean Master Salazar's rooms and your rooms for yourself and Mistress Rowena." said Walter, bowing to Harry and Salazar before slamming the butt of his axe's shaft against the stone floor and vanishing.

"Weird elf... Obsessed with titles and suchlike. Salazar and I are going to be busy for the rest of the evening, don't leave the boundary wards, don't go into the cellar with the entrance to the zoo and DEFINATELY don't go into the zoo. Reginald!"

A second elf appeared, wearing a simple hooded doublet, hose and a pair of leather boots and a belt with a short dagger.

"Master Arlyss calls?" said the elf.

"I did Reginald, Salazar and myself are going to be out for most of today, please provide for the Lady Rowena and our guests but first, we need a quick bite."

The elf vanished and a table nearby became laden with slices of various meats. Harry and Salazar each drew a dagger and impaled a slice of meat.

"I've had over a decade to forget modern practices Sirius." Harry said, catching the questioning look on his godfather's face.

Quickly devouring a slice of venison, Harry used a wand to clean his dagger before sheathing it.

"Rowena love, get these two exercising and training, don't hold back." he ordered, pulling up his hood as Salazar cleaned his dagger.

Each man raised the hoods of their cloaks, carefully applying an illusion on their chests of a simple yellow shield with a red-bordered cross of blue with squared ends except the downward pointing limb which tapered into a point, next to their individual coats of arms.

Applying a powerful concealment charm to both of them, Harry grabbed Salazar and apparated away, landing outside Buckingham Palace with the Royal Banner flying above the Portico.

"Follow my lead Salazar, I know you can sense where I am, even under concealment." Harry hissed.

Weaving through groups of, mainly Oriental, tourists, Harry and Salazar made their way into the depths of the palace. A few minutes of searching and they found the Queen's study. Harry cast an illusion over Salazar and himself, retaining both King Æthelred's coat of arms and their own personal ones, but showing them both wearing suits instead of their battlerobes and concealed their blades. He then released the disillusionment charm and walked around the corner toward the two men guarding the elegant doors to the study.

"Halt! Whoever you are you can't be up here." they shouted, drawing guns from inside their jackets.

Harry simply sighed, exuding a slight, invisible aura of intimidation while showing total indifference to the two men holding him and gunpoint. A twitch of Harry's hidden hand kept Salazar from reacting.

"Gentlemen, tell the Her Majesty that a matter of urgency has come up. Tell her that the Earl of Templesbury is here to speak to her on a matter of conflict within one of her realms. And don't worry your little heads about the Queen, long ago I swore a binding oath of loyalty to the crown and to the country." Harry said calmly.

The two men exchanged glances as the tall, slightly scarred man showed total indifference to the fact he was being held at gunpoint, instead, they were feeling somewhat intimidated. Slowly, one of them pocketed the firearm and hesitantly knocked on the door. After a few moments, he was called to enter by a voice known all over the modern world.

A brief conversation could be heard, muffled by the doors that had swung shut behind the guard before he returned and, holding open the door, said to Harry;

"You may enter my Lord."

Harry nodded his thanks and strode through, closely followed by Salazar under his concealment charms. The queen was sat at a desk, wearing a matching sky-blue blouse and skirt, her piercing blue eyes boring into him.

Harry sank to one knee for a few moments before rising again;

"Your Majesty, I must apologise for both my unexpected arrival and my lack of knowledge of decorum, I last visited a monarch at the Hall at Corfe when I took leave from King Æthelred. I called this unexpected audience due to a civil war in one of your realms which is in it's early stages and their government doesn't see fit to either believe it as truth or to alert you."

The Queen's eyes narrowed slightly at his comment about King Æthelred before asking;

"And pray tell, where is this civil war?"

"In this very country Your Majesty. The British Ministry of Magic is rife with corruption and collaborators or outright supporters of the terrorist Tom Riddle, otherwise known as the Dark Lord Voldemort or to most people who won't say his name, you-know-who or he-who-must-not-be-named and his militia, the Death Eaters." Harry responded.

"Minister Bagnold informed Us that you-know-who was dead, killed by a person called Potter. You mean to say he wasn't dead?"

"Bagnold was somewhat right... Riddle attacked Lord Potter's home. His parents were both killed in the ensuing combat with the Dark Lord. I believe that the then Lady Potter performed an obscure ritual, using her sacrifice to save her son's life, reflecting a curse back at the Dark Lord. The curse used is unblockable by anything save a physical object like a wall, but Lady Potter used her death to power some form of shield which reflected the killing curse back at Riddle. Lord Potter became an orphan at one and a half years old." Harry sighed slightly before continuing;

"Their house was under an enchantment called the Fidelius, a spell which conceals the knowledge of the location within the soul of a secret keeper, who would in turn inform anyone the location, only the keeper could speak of the location and you could walk up to the edge of a Fidelius and not realise anything was there. Unfortunately, they chose the wrong secret keeper, while using a charade with a decoy secret keeper. They were betrayed by their secret keeper and died as a result of trusting the wrong person. The traitor, Peter Pettigrew, framed the decoy, Sirius Black, for his own death and those of twelve non-magicals. Black was imprisoned without trial and escaped after a decade of illegal incarceration. He is innocent and currently living in my castle."

"We shall take note of this, but do continue." commented the Queen.

"According to my research, the Dark Lord used the darkest, most twisted and evil magics on himself. He split his soul. In his own words to me during a little encounter a while ago, 'I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality' and 'I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost...'. That is what he told me at the beginning of the summer when he returned to a body. I only was able to bring this news today due to the Dark Lord's actions."

"We begin to understand why you have brought this to me. I ask though that you call me Elizabeth, repeating Your Majesty over and over again gets tiring for the both of us. May I enquire why a man bearing a title I have only ever heard mention of once, wearing two crests I only faintly recognise informs me that the last monarch he stood before was in the late tenth century?" Elizabeth enquired curiously.

"Yes You-... Elizabeth, the simpler crest of the shield and cross is that of King Æthelred as he gave me right to wear as his Master Huscarl and advisor. The more complicated crest is my personal one. You may have heard of several of my many names, though I doubt that any documents save my own record my name, I have been known as Lord Arlyss FitzPotter, the Templar amongst a few others."

"And you are alive a around a thousand years since the rule of Æthelred...?"

"Essentially, I locked myself in a stasis since near the very end of the tenth century... Ever heard of a curious artefact called a Philosopher's Stone?" Harry replied.

"Philosopher's Stone, fictional creation of the supposed alchemist Nicholas Flamel."

"Indeed, Flamel actually did exist, but also did create a philosopher's stone. I managed to make one during an idiotic experiment I shouldn't have tried. I attempted to mix the three most magical and toxic substances I could access at the time together. Unfortunately, I believe Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel died around 1992 when a Dark Wizard tried to take their stone and it was destroyed, though I am unsure if it was their only stone or even if it was the real thing."

"Interesting, we must speak on matters of history, for obvious reasons, few have seen history as it occurred or participated in it..." Elizabeth said.

"Of course. Back to the matter of our civil war, the Minister of Magic is a fool, and a politician to boot. He will do anything to hang onto his seat as Minister. It doesn't help that his number one advisor, who kept him from doing anything foolhardy, died in late June."

"What happened to him?" the Queen asked.

Harry grinned malevolently; "A massively overpowered bone-exploding curse to the torso. He pretty much held the title of chief master senior boot-licker in chief to the Dark Lord as well as paying bribes to the ministry left right and centre."

"I assume that you were responsible for his untimely demise...?"

"Indeed, I have a bit of a feud with the Malfoy family, it started in 988 AD, I was on a mission for King Æthelred and I was meeting a senior cleric at Saint Étienne in Paris and I encountered Arnaud du Malfoi... He insulted my horse so, I in turn, turned him into a ferret and bounced him up and back down the central aisle of the cathedral. Every Malfoy I have met has been a blonde-haired ponce..." Harry grouched; "They proclaim themselves to be the ultimate nobility, that you can be no higher than a Malfoy, no higher than a blonde-haired self-centred narcissistic invading Gaul..."

The Queen audibly sniggered as Harry continued his tirade.

"They go on about having huge amounts of money and that 'A Malfoy bows to no man' despite the fact that two of my vaults contain around £480,000,000, not to mention I haven't checked the Templesbury account which should have flourished with a thousand years of investment and interest... Enough to buy the Malfoy's out of everything they own. Then the Malfoy's have a thing about bowing and scraping before every Dark Lord."

"Hypocritical..." commented the Queen.

"Got sidetracked again. Anyway, these Death Eaters, their supporters and collaborators want to do away with those magicals born to non-magical parents, establish rule over the non-magicals and so on. They won't succeed in the long-term, but it could drag into a long and bloody war. However, with myself and my honourary brother back in the picture after a thousand years, we can end the war before it becomes too bloody, but for that, we need the reigning monarch to reactivate our Battle Mage commissions as we retired in 991 AD."

"You think that two people can stop this terrorist?"

"Indeed I do, Lord Ares Salazar Slytherin and myself, known and feared as the Serpent and the Templar were not amongst the most infamous wizards in the Dark Ages without reason. We were among the best fighters in Europe until 989 AD, when near everything changed..." Harry said in a pained tone.

"What happened?" Elizabeth asked gently.

"I had two hundred mages with me as we rode to relieve a small garrison defending Lowestoft against raiders. I pressed our men to ride through the night. In a valley near Norwich, I lost over a hundred men to Irwin of Norwich, a Necromancer and Blood Mage. The darkest of wizards, he ambushed us as we rode... I still hold the guilt that I didn't order us to make camp. At dawn, the forty survivors hunted down the Necromancer-cum-Blood Mage. He had a force of thousands of undead, including the mages I'd lost, and around four hundred living minions... By noontide, the undead were destroyed with thirty-five of my mages, leaving Salazar, myself and five others alive. We killed Irwin's men, I had been forced to put one of my own men out of his misery before I killed Irwin and two hundred of his men while the other half of his force were destroyed by Sal and two others. I lost a total of two hundred and fifty men or thereabouts that I departed with from London." Harry replied.

"Very well, I will reactivate you and Lord Slytherin as Battle Mages, though you are the only ones, in the time since Æthelred, the Huscarls and Battle Mages have been confined to the history books. What do I have to do?" asked the Queen.

"We aren't going to be history anymore..." Harry said, grinning viciously; "Salazar, your Battle Mage License please!"

Salazar dropped his disillusionment charm at the same moment as Harry dispelled the the illusions on the two of them.

"Your Majesty, may I introduce Lord Ares Salazar Slytherin, Baron of Templesbury, Master Huscarl, Master Royal Battle Mage and Master Duellist." Harry said.

"Your Majesty." Salazar said, falling to one knee briefly before his monarch before he added; "Here you go Templar, also remember, the Wizard's Council representative..."

Harry took the sheet of parchment from Salazar but not before hissing quietly to him;

§Irritating snake, I was going to get to that after this...§

"Parsel, Your Majesty, the serpent tongue. Useful skill as it allows us to communicate with snakes, various reptiles and Templar's pet dragons." Salazar said, noting the Queen's questioning look.

"Anyway, to reactivate our commissions, you have two options, the Latin or the Old English. I recommend the Latin as it is easily pronounced, simply say 'Ego, Elizabeth in secundo, per gratia dei regina de Anglia, revertentur Ares Salazar Slytherin et Arlyss FitzPotter ut mihi servitium quasi magus de pugna. Annuntio quod ita sit.' Translates as I, Elizabeth the second by the Grace of God Queen of England, return Ares Salazar Slytherin and Arlyss FitzPotter to my service as mages of battle. I declare it to be so."

Seeing the Queen frowning slightly, Salazar conjured a piece of parchment with the words in Latin and modern English written on it.

"The enchantments on the station of Monarch that we placed only accept oaths and declarations in Latin and English circa 1000 AD. It would take several months of continuous effort to replace the enchantments..." Harry commented.

After a few moments, the Queen repeated the Latin and a flash of light illuminated the study and several lines of text added themselves to Harry and Salazar's Battle Mage licenses.

"Gentlemen, what did you mean by pet dragons?" asked the Queen.

"Harry here has a small reserve hidden beneath Templesbury Castle with a few rare species. And his pet Nundu who runs around the castle freely."

"What species?"

"I have a variety of phoenixes, dragons, basilisks, chimeras, manticores and suchlike." Harry answered; "I can't list them all off the top of my head but I took a year out and toured Europe, Northern Africa and even Eastern Asia for rare species. You ought to come to the reserve and see these creatures."

"Maybe I shall. When can such a visit be arranged?" Elizabeth replied.

"Immediately Elizabeth. Travel is instant but touring the reserve may take a few hours. Should you wish to, such a visit could be arranged for this afternoon or any other time of your choice." replied Harry.

"Hmm... I have a scheduled discussion with a member of Our government this afternoon. I believe that Charles is going to have to manage the discussion. It is good practice for the Heir to the Crown to take the occasional responsibility and learn from it." Elizabeth said with a straight face as Harry raised a single eyebrow and Salazar smirked.

"Excellent Your Majesty, however, I believe that you should wear riding clothes for this." Salazar commented after a moment.

"If you'll give me a few minutes gentlemen, do you mind if I bring one of my aides with me?" asked the Queen.

"It shouldn't be a problem. Inform him to wear riding gear." Harry responded.

Twenty minutes later and the Queen returned with an evidently retired military officer in tow, both wearing outdoor clothes, riding boots and jodhpurs.

"Lord Slytherin, Lord FitzPotter, this is Stanbrook, he will accompany us. How are we going to get to your estate?" asked the Queen.

Harry had subtly flicked his wand at the two and keyed them into the wards of the castle rising from his seat.

"Salazar, take Stanbrook, I'll bring Her Majesty, meet outside the gatehouse." Harry said.

He wrapped an arm around the Queen and vanished silently from the study, followed moments later by Salazar and the aide. They reappeared outside the fortress' walls, the Queen gasping slightly from the apparition.

"How did you do that?" asked Stanbrook as he straightened up.

Salazar simply smirked and replied; "Magic."

In much the same way as their earlier arrival, Harry mentally opened the gates and portcullis, leading their guests through. Pressing his wand-tip to his throat, Harry called out;

"Rowena! Bring the two old men to the Entrance Hall."

His voice reverberated around the castle's walls as they strode up the lawns. A faint roar could be heard from the far side of the keep.

"Stay calm everyone, my pet cat will likely come running any moment now..." Harry added softly.

Moments later the grey coloured Nundu skidded around the far corner of the keep, bounding towards him before skidding to a halt while turning a full semicircle to stand next to Harry.

"Boris, my pet Nundu, Salazar and I got him of a poacher and collector of rare animals in about 987 AD." Harry introduced the gigantic cat to the Queen and her aide.

A few minutes of walking and they were gathered in the Entrance Hall, awaiting Rowena, Sirius and Remus. After a few moments, the trio arrived from within the keep, wearing loose robes and looking slightly tired;

"Your Majesty, may I introduce my Lady Rowena, Sirius Black, Scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and Remus Lupin." Harry said, exchanging a trademark smirk with Salazar as the three gaped for a moment before kneeling momentarily before the Queen.

"Anyway, enough genuflecting, we're heading to my little zoo." Harry called from a small door set in the wall.

Pulling it open, he lead them down a short flight of stairs, continuously casting a stream of fire, lighting torches set in their sconces in the wall. Eventually, a large, vaulted room appeared out of the darkness, the stone walls pockmarked with small craters and cuts and huge streaks of black where fire had burnt the walls.

"This is my private potion's laboratory where I invent new and interesting ways of exploding things and research magical genetics and physics." Harry said, gesturing around him.

Leading the group to a second door, set in the wall, Harry spent around five minutes disabling enchantments and various locks before simply pulling it open. He jumped into the slide which was hidden behind the door and slid down the crystal smooth rock until he simply landed on his feet in a small paddock bathing beneath a near-cloudless sky. A few moments later and the others landed around him.

"Massive space expansion charm and numerous other enchantments made this feel like the outside world." Salazar explained.

Harry simply whistled and watched as half a dozen horses trotted into the paddock from a large, monastic barn. A swipe of his wand summoned tack from the barn, and a slight flick and each horse was fully outfitted.

"We don't have enough horses, Rowena love, you mind riding behind me on Athelstan?" Harry asked.

"Fine by me Harry." Rowena replied.

A quick transfiguration spell and the saddle lengthened somewhat and changed shape. Harry hoisted himself up into the saddle with ease and pulled Rowena up behind him, sighing contently as she wrapped her arms around his waist. Harry turned and gently kissed her before returning his gaze forward, down the compacted earth path. A few moments later everyone was in the saddle and he dug his heels lightly into Athelstan's flanks.

For the next three hours, Sirius, Remus, the Queen and her aide followed Salazar, Harry and Rowena around the preserve. They were astounded by Harry's collection, somewhat amused by his description of a Roman Imperial Dragon as cute. They trotted across the fields with the Pegasi and the Unicorns, watched the Phoenixes in many different colours and sizes flitting around above them, dancing an aerial ballet with the Griffins that swooped overhead, protecting the group. As they finished a circuit of the outermost path around the reserve, Harry called out;

"Last person to the centre is an old fossil... Despite the fact that I have been around since the 10th century... 3...2...1...GO!"

Digging his heels firmly into Athelstan's flank and leaning forward, low over the horse's neck, Harry urged him from a light trot straight into a steady gallop. A few minutes later and he'd drawn ahead of the field when he heard the hum of a sword. Drawing his own in a blur of movement, Harry countered a blow from the smirking founder who had caught up with him. Both slowed as sword-blows were exchanged, reducing their speed to a moderate canter. Finally, Harry rammed his shoulder into Salazar who nearly fell, Athena veering wildly as he tried to stay in the saddle.

Harry kept the canter going, ah he knew that riding too fast would wear out the horses within a few miles. Knowing that he could maintain a reasonable pace over a long distance due to Athelstan's heritage, Harry kept going at the canter. Still a dozen feet ahead of the others and within sight of the flagpole at the centre, Harry urged the charger into a gallop, Athelstan's hooves beating a deep tone into the earth. Barely slowing down, Harry slid out of the saddle, running as he hit the ground, allowing Rowena to take the reins. Conjuring a deckchair and a pair of sunglasses, Harry quickly sat down, applying an illusion to make him look like he was wearing a Hawaiian t-shirt and light coloured slacks.

"Dobby!" Harry called.

"Master Harry Sir is alive! Dobby is-" rambled the elf.

"Dobby, can you get a full set of china and silver and make afternoon tea and have it in the Great Hall for seven. Please ask one of the elves to add aqua de vita to it, they'll understand." Harry instructed, cutting the elf off.

"Yes Master Harry Sir, Dobby will be doings that." said the elf happily before vanishing.

A few seconds later and Rowena had circled Athelstan back around and dismounted. Walking over to Harry she wordlessly plopped herself into his lap as he encircled her waist with his arms. Less than a minute later and Athena thundered up to them, her mouth foaming, Salazar hunched forward over her head as he reined her in.

"Took you long enough Salazar." Harry commented.

"Shut it Oh Great Harry. I, a mere mortal do ride a mere mortal horse, not Athelstan. Secondly, I initially learnt to ride in the fields of flowers, not the fields of battle." Salazar replied as he jumped out of the saddle.

It took a few minutes before the Queen, her aide, Sirius and Remus rode up to the three, Salazar having followed Harry's example and conjured a deckchair, though he didn't undergo the indignity of wearing anything less than his favoured battlerobes.

"Where did you gentlemen learn to ride?" enquired the Queen.

"I began riding the moment I could get on a horse, but it was nothing more than trotting around the family manor." Salazar answered.

"I rode occasionally to travel but the first occasion I rode like that was the Battle of Grimsby. Up against a three-rank shield wall and a couple of hundred Nords firing and throwing arrows, axes, stones, spears and suchlike at you. I learnt quickly enough as one generally does when under pressure such as that as losing ones life. In this case, the fear was not for my own life but a village of children and elderly which would have been ransacked and the inhabitants massacred." Harry added.

Each person dismounted, the Queen landing nimbly from her horse, absently patting the horse's neck as she looped the reins over the horse's head.

Harry flicked his wand, returning the tack to the barn and allowing the horses back into their paddock.

"_Rowena darling, would you mind allowing me to stand. Partly I want to get back to the surface and partly, I may portray a heartless bastard and may be a Master Occlumens, but a beautiful woman, especially you, my love, will eventually get a reaction, especially if you sit on me..." _Harry commented mentally to his love.

Rowena slowly rose from lying on top of Harry, though not without wriggling her derrière against Harry who simply smirked at her.

"Everyone put a hand on the flagpole!" Salazar instructed.

A slight tap of his wand against the flagpole once the seven had their hands against it and they were stood in the Great Hall, within the autumn evening sunlight streaming through the open doors of the Great Hall and the outer doors of the keep.

"I forgot how much I loved being here. Probably my first true home." Harry sighed contentedly, pulling Rowena into his side slightly and kissing her on the cheek.

"Cub, I know you mentioned some fairly nasty wards, but how long would it take someone like Dumbledore or Voldemort to get in?" asked Remus.

"By my calculation, Salazar and I together, and we are significantly more powerful than either Riddle or Dumbledore, could never get in. The wards at the moment are at a level far higher than at Gringotts or Hogwarts and they are only set to moderate defence. Should I set them to full siege mode... Basically, the estate is encased in one set of wards, the castle in another and then the keep itself in a third. Even modern weaponry such as nuclear and biological warfare can't get in here." Harry replied; "Then I can move creatures up from the reserve to the castle, then there are projectile dispensing defences, all the sets of armour and statuary around the castle can defend in one way or another. Should the castle fall, I can cascade the wards into a wildfire explosion while simultaneously flooding the entire estate with electrically charged Fiendfyre or I can do that to the ground between each set of wards."

"You say you two are more powerful, but surely with a century of practice, Dumbledore has more skill?" Sirius asked.

"A demonstration perhaps Salazar? No holds barred?" Harry asked.

Salazar nodded and Harry seemingly pulled a raised dais from the floor with his wand before cancelling the Hawaiian t-shirt glamour. Each dueller pulled up the hoods of their cloaks. A ward flashed once, appearing as a translucent wall along the edges of the dais before returning to normal, save for a slight shimmer in the air. Before beginning the duel, Harry called out;

"And don't forget to enjoy afternoon tea in the oldest surviving structure and miracle of my own architecture in Britain. Now Salazar, BEGIN!"

A moment passed as no curses were exchanged as the two duellers eyed each other. Then Harry moved very slightly, a mere twitch and Salazar drew his wand up to fire a spell off. Within the next second, every one of the Greater Elemental Curses rocketed at Salazar who blocked them with a massive conjured wall of jade-green granite, carved with intricate Celtic art.

'Showmanship is so much in duelling' Harry thought to himself as he fired nearly a dozen different physical destruction curses straight at the wall.

Salazar responded to the two volleys with a series of decapitation, organ decaying and blood boiling curses which were hit with counter-curses before they could cross halfway across the dais between the duellers. Harry summoned several minor pieces of Battle Magic as Salazar swung a firewhip at him.

Harry leaned to one side and wandlessly creating an invisible shield on his arm, to the onlookers, it looked like Salazar's firewhip had been perfectly avoided with minimal movement as it slid down the shield.

With the Battle Magic complete, Harry connected his own firewhip to Salazar's, wrenching it from him and twisting it around his body. With ease, Salazar turned it into a loose rubble wall, firing an overpowered minor blasting hex at it, reducing it to sizeable debris followed up by a banishing charm and a transfiguration into balls of iron.

Each of the dozen balls of metal were obliterated in midair by jets of sickly green light as a veritable stream of it illuminated the room in the eerie green glow of the killing curse. Salazar simply sidestepped several of the fatal curses, responding with three bone curses and a triple heart attack curse which Harry deflected into the shimmering barrier with an almost bored expression as he flicked his wand.

Five minor lightning spells crackled down the length of the dais, causing Salazar to pull up a second wall of granite which simply melted under two streams of Fiendfyre from Harry who was stood erect, looking like the Templar of history, a known, feared and respected warrior, two wands held high, the deadly fire streaking toward Salazar.

Finally the green robed wizard faltered before casting a flame separation charm with one wand as he drew a second and fired a swarm of killing curses, cruciatus curses and imperius curses at Harry who cancelled the cursed fire and conjured a beautiful, Gothic carved slab of black marble which shattered into jagged shards as they blocked the three sets of curses.

Harry transfigured the debris around him including the marble into moderately sized griffins. Several were taken down immediately by killing curses, reverting to rubble, while a handful were incinerated by Fiendfyre. Harry wasn't stopping as he fired the blade curses, consisting of the various cutting curses, disembowelling curses and piercing curses.

Salazar had a hard time blocking all of them while hacking down Griffins until he cast the Medusa curse. Harry instantly reinforced the wards around them, hoping to god that those watching wouldn't be petrified until Salazar released the curse, having destroyed all of his Griffins before sending two sets of curses, the intestine regurgitation curse and the intestine disembowelling curse at Salazar.

Harry shouted out;

"WAIT!"

Salazar ceased casting for a moment as Harry smirked, rolled his eyes and blasted Salazar with easily a dozen massively overpowered stunning spells from the two wands, sending him rocketing the length of the hall, followed by a veritable swarm of cushioning charms and awakening charms.

Harry cautiously holstered both wands, calling to Salazar;

"Duel over, let's eat."

His reply was a muttered;

"Smug git, probably won't cease gloating for months."

Harry dropped the ward and stepped off the dais which was littered with debris, transfigured animals and weapons and riddled with scorch marks, small craters and scars.

"That was invigorating!" Harry said cheerfully, the only sign of his incredible duel being two deep breaths before his respiration evened out.

"Bloody hell!" swore Sirius as Remus simply gaped.

"Sirius, while we didn't hold back on curses, when I encounter Voldemort, I am going to make that look like a jinxing contest. Both Salazar and I are a bit rusty, we retired from fighting sometime in late 990 AD." Harry commented, wandlessly summoning a biscuit.

"I recognised some of those curses Harry, but not all of them... How many weren't instantly fatal?" Remus asked slowly.

"The bone-shattering and bone-breaking curses unless they hit the head or the neck and spine aren't instantly fatal. The organ decaying curses would give you about a quarter of an hour of life and the stunning spells at the end. Then there are the two of the Unforgivables which usually aren't instantly fatal unless I overpower the cruciatus too much or use the imperius to instruct Salazar to kill himself. Everything else was instantly fatal. Also, most of those were my inventions, the Greater Elemental curses and a selection of the more powerful blasting and cutting curses." he replied.

"Tell me, how many people did you capture as Battle Mages? And it is said Godric Gryffindor invented the lost Greater Elemental spells..." Remus asked.

Harry and Salazar exchanged glances, mentally calculating for a moment before Salazar replied;

"Between early 988 and the middle of 989, we brought in less than thirty prisoners."

"And after that?" Sirius enquired.

"We stopped playing nice with those undeserving of mercy." hissed Harry, once again remembering Irwin of Norwich.

"And also Master Lupin, Godric excelled at transfiguration, especially in battle and was downright frightening with a sword. He also was an expert brewer of explosive and combustive potions. He regularly blew up the potion's labs at Hogwarts, couldn't create a single potion without something being destroyed in a fireball..." Salazar commented; "Eventually we simply put the potions lab under an enchantment similar to the Fidelius but keyed to not be visible to Godric. He couldn't have created a spell to save his life."

Allowing Salazar to return the Queen to Buckingham Palace, Harry retired early to bed, accompanied by Rowena. His bedroom was a large room, the honey coloured stone hung with various tapestries, a large open fireplace set opposite the bed with a huge hearth and room to burn a large tree.

Apart from the hearth, the entire floor was carpeted in dark blue and the four poster bed opposite was hung in a refreshing cream colour. Several velvet-cushioned cross-framed chairs lay around the room and a mirror sat atop the central chest of drawers of three mahogany chests of drawers, flanked by two huge wardrobes. The gleaming furniture was elegantly carved with images of magical creatures and various medieval and Celtic-style designs of his own.

Harry banished his robes to a chair where they draped themselves over the back before tearing off the wand holsters he had on his forearms and throwing them onto a desk. A flick of his wand and the privacy, locking and defensive wards activated around the room before he tucked it under his pillow.

Sliding under the covers, Harry watched as he was joined by Rowena in a similar state of undress. She slid in until her back was resting against Harry's side, her head on his chest.

"Harry, do you love me?" she asked after a moment.

"Beyond anything Rowena, beyond anything. What brought this on?" Harry replied.

"I- err... I... wondered..." she stuttered.

Harry gently nuzzled the back of her neck, kissing and biting lightly as she arched her back;

"You wanted to know when I would ask you to marry me... am I correct?"

"Umm, yes." Rowena replied hesitantly.

"Row love, before we came to this time, I was contemplating exactly how, where and when to ask you. I love you beyond anything, but I would hesitate to marry until Riddle is dead, I truly love you, Rowena Ravenclaw and I do not wish any harm to befall you. For the moment your identity and that of Salazar remains safe, my own will have to be revealed sooner or later, I don't want Riddle to find out who you are and place you in danger, though I would do anything and everything to protect you." Harry answered honestly.

A few moments of silence ensued before Rowena murmured; "I love you Harry, always have done, always will do."

The two drifted off to sleep, cast into the realm of Morpheus, two halves completed, joined across time.

Early the next morning and Harry was up as unnaturally early as usual. His first stop of the day was the castle Armoury. Over the years of travel, he'd collected thousands of weapons, hundreds of wands and innumerable amounts of armour. The Armoury was similar to a library, save instead of bookcases, there were racks for weapons to be hung on around the wall and islands between them.

Harry pulled a pendant from around his neck and dropped it on the floor. Taking a leaf from the Potter's book, he'd created several more trunks which shrank into pendants. A flick of his wand and it hit the floor full-sized, landing with a muffled thump and a loud clatter.

Wrenching open the lid, the gleaming blades of hundreds of swords from all over Europe, Eastern Asia and Northern Africa winked in the light cast by the blazing torches around the walls. Using a specially modified set of spells he'd created for weapon maintenance, Harry sharpened all the blades, applied unbreakable charms and repaired any cuts, nicks or chips in them.

A swipe of his wand and all the blades rose out of the trunk and hung in midair, tips downward and a second swipe sent them flying onto the weapon racks lining one wall. Harry repeated the process with several more trunks of weapons. After a few minutes, every rack was filled as spears, axes, swords, shields, unstrung longbows, shortbows, crossbows, shields, plate and chain armour. A final rack was lined with hundreds of wands, some ornate, some plain, made of different woods, different lengths, all unique. The room seemed to adapt whenever Harry required more space. He grinned to himself, thanking his skills at enchanting to create this minor room of requirement.

A few minutes later and a deep reverberating sound rang out over the estate as the Great Bell rang to awaken the castle's inhabitants. Just a short time later and a smirking Harry walked into the Great Hall, clad only in a pair of trousers, his dragonhide belt and boots, a loose silk tunic held closed by a single button, displaying his firmly muscled torso, crisscrossed with scars.

By the time that Sirius and Remus appeared in the Great Hall, the sun had risen, Rowena was sat back in one of the cross-framed chairs at the high table and Harry and Salazar were duelling again, this time armed with hand-and-a-half swords instead of wands. The brutal duel sent sparks flying across the hall as the distinct sound of metal impacting metal echoed around the hall.

After a quarter of an hour of blurred movement, cuts, thrusts, slashes being exchanged, countered and parried, the two fighters ceased their combat, dropping the swords onto a table with a loud clatter. Neither dueller had drawn blood, though Salazar's right sleeve was shredded by several cuts and Harry's shirt lay open as the single button holding it closed had been sliced off.

"Light breakfast gentlemen, then up to the armoury! You're getting kitted out then we're training! I have an artefact called an absorption pensieve which will put you in a memory, not as a spectator but as the person who's memory it is and any spells and suchlike will be pushed into your mind." Harry said, spearing a slice of chicken on his dagger.

He'd just finished stripping the meat off the blade when the phoenix ring burned slightly. Drawing his wand, Harry cast a powerful switching spell to clad each of the five in black dragonhide robes, the Black Family Crest on Sirius' robes, the Serpent crest on Salazar's robe and the Templar crest appearing on both his and Rowena's robes, a simple white cross on Harry's torso being the only distinctive feature. The three time-travellers pulled up the hoods of their cloaks before each grabbing onto a Portkey Harry threw them.

As he'd cast the switching spell, Harry was moving immediately. Through the phoenix ring, he'd tunnelled into the Protean Charm network of the Order's pendants that Dumbledore issued to his members. Harry quickly gained the location of the one responsible for activating the charm, transferred that location to a Portkey spell on several conjured lumps of stone and threw them at Sirius, Salazar, Remus and Rowena before apparating after Rowena, following her via their link.

They landed in the Headmaster's office as numerous other people appeared through the Floo and Portkeys. Dumbledore came rushing in, clutching a long ribbon, looped around his arm.

"Attack on Diagon Alley, hundred plus Death Eaters! Grab on!" he shouted.

"What say you Templar?" asked Salazar.

"No quarter. Kill the bastards." replied Harry

Moments later they landed in Diagon Alley in a flash of blue light.

"EAGLE! WARDS, NOW! ORDER, BEHIND TEMPLAR AND SERPENT!" Harry bellowed.

Rowena immediately began tearing down any Death Eater wards and erected numerous anti-travel wards, all keyed to the Dark Mark so that anyone else could apparate away while anyone incoming with the Dark Mark would be reduced to a molecular level. Salazar began his attack with a huge stream of Fiendfyre for mainly psychological purposes as Harry fired killing curses at an incredible rate and with incredible accuracy, non-verbally.

As soon as her wards were erected, Rowena added her own Fiendfyre to the apocalyptic inferno, allowing Salazar to rein in his cursed flames before hissing;

§Ssserpensssorita§

An moderately sized basilisk flowed from his wand, lashing out at a black robed wizard with it's dagger-like fangs. Harry had ceased casting the killing curse after he was certain that the imminent threat was over and they could go on the offensive. Using a spell of his own creation, he tore the magical cores from near a dozen Death Eaters, infusing them in all the Order members behind them. Noticing a distinct purple light fly toward the Death Eaters, he yelled;

"A tickling hex! Are you a bunch of stupendous morons who think this is the Bridge club! If you won't use strong spells, at least use bludgeoning, cutting, piercing and blasting spells!"

Rowena giggled at his insults, having replaced the jet of Fiendfyre in favour of the Greater Elemental curses and some minor Battle Magic as she advanced alongside her love and their brother down the Alley. Salazar and Harry began picking off the Death Eaters in the shadows and on rooftops with well-aimed heart attack curses. Spotting the coordinator of the attack, Salazar and Harry simultaneously fired legilimens curses, quickly mind-raping the Death Eater and placing all the memories in mental storage for later evaluation before shredding the wizard's mind on their way out.

Salazar vanished his basilisk as finally the Death Eaters seemed to have been completely overwhelmed. Evidently the early morning attack was meant to raze Diagon Alley without any witnesses, hoping that the return of Voldemort would still be denied but still causing the damage.

A single Death Eater struggled up a dozen feet ahead of them, a green glow on his wand tip. Harry simply flicked his wand, waited a moment and the Death Eater exploded into a red mist.

"Heh... Changed the amount of Potassium in his body, multiplying it massively until it reacted with the water in the body and detonated." Harry replied to Rowena's mental prod.

"What have you done?" asked Dumbledore, aghast.

"I lost any patience with abusers of Dark Magic in 989 with Irwin of Norwich. In that morning, alone, I killed two hundred men and innumerable Inferi. Don't expect me to play nice." Harry spat; "If any are alive still, I don't really care what you do with them. Tonks, Shacklebolt, you ought to get to the DMLE. Delacour, William Weasley, I expect Gringotts would like to speak to you. Rest of you back to the Bridge club."

He threw a Portkey to the Templesbury at Sirius, watching as he vanished back to the safety of the castle. Almost all of the Order apparated away from the body strewn Alley. Salazar and Harry swept the left hand sides of their cloaks over their shoulders, uncovering their left sides, with a bastard sword, a francisca throwing axe and a dagger hanging from each one's belt. They then released their auras as numerous Aurors apparated in, the red robed witches and wizards encircling the trio, everyone else being further down the alley.

"Aurors! Surrender your wands..." shouted the leader, trailing off.

"and our swords, axes and daggers...?" asked Salazar; "At least we didn't bring your pet Nundu..."

Harry began to laugh, for the first time in many years, an honest laugh;

"Truly, you Aurors believe you could force us to do anything we didn't want to? Good one, now run along like good sycophantic headless chicken and check if we killed all the Death Eaters."

"What have you got against these lot Harry?" Salazar whispered.

"For one, they serve Minister Fudge. Secondly they locked away my godfather with the dementors without trial. Thirdly they couldn't beat a barn door in a duel at ten paces." Harry commented, saying the final sentence loudly before whispering; "And being an irritating, antagonistic bastard has its fun days..."

"SURRENDER! WE'RE AURORS!" shouted one of the Aurors.

"And we're licensed Battle Mages;" Harry said, omitting that only he and Salazar were Battle Mages; "Go stuff these scum through the Veil and tell Fudge that we tolerate him, for now."

He then apparated to Templesbury Castle, grabbing Rowena and Salazar who were stood back-to-back with him, wands outstretched. Relaxing as they appeared in the Great Hall, each of the three holstered their wands and reined in their auras.

"Salazar, the absorption pensieve is in the lab, can you get it for me and two vials of the Elixir?" asked Harry before looking to Remus and Sirius; "You two follow me."

Harry led them up a spiral staircase and along a corridor to a dark coloured wood door with burnished copper hinges and bars across it. He simply placed his hand against it and it swung open.

"Gentlemen, I want you to pick out at least one extra wand, a sword and a dagger suitable for you. And Sirius, no two-handed longswords or massive Dane axes. Biggest you'll be able to wield is a hand-and-a-half sword." Harry said as he walked into the armoury.

"We have our wands, are these necessary?" asked Remus.

"Remus, guess what weaponry I have on me." Harry ordered.

"I guess two wands, your sword, dagger and axe." he answered.

"Wrong, I have six daggers on my person ready for use and more in pockets. I have three swords, two axes, two battlestaffs, a Dane axe and seven wands. Then with my potions collection I could be a one man siege. Now get wands, just run your hand over them and take those that feel the best to you, then get a sword, I recommend a medium arming sword each." Harry replied sharply.

Remus quickly obeyed and followed Sirius to the weapon racks. He quickly picked out two wands that responded well to him and a heavy arming sword as Sirius pulled an almost rapier-thin-bladed sword from the rack. Nodding his approval, Harry strode back to the Great Hall, followed by Remus and Sirius.

Salazar had placed the rune inscribed crystal bowl on one of the tables and was sat next to Rowena who visibly perked up as Harry entered, still wearing the hooded cloak, though she and Salazar had thrown off their hoods. As Harry approached them, Rowena rose from her seat and wrapped her arms around Harry's torso as his enveloped her shoulders, having pushed back his hood.

"I didn't get the chance to do this earlier Harry love."

She then leaned upward slightly and pushed her lips against his as he probed her mouth with his tongue in an electric moment of passion. After a few moments of tangling tongues and lips sealed together, the two broke apart. Rowena was faintly brushing while apart from a slight twinkle in his eyes, Harry's mask was, as ever, well maintained.

Sirius was catcalling loudly while Remus' face had a massive smirk plastered all over it. Salazar simply ignored the couple as, had he ever found the woman for him, he would undoubtedly be the same. Rowena and Harry were head over heels for one another, something that brought him great happiness for his honourary brother and sister.

"So Harry, you apparently land one of the most renowned and beautiful women in magical history... Do I need to give you _the _talk?" Sirius sniggered.

He shot a baleful glare at Sirius; "No Sirius, I don't need the talk, sharing ones bed for the last two years tends to give you a rudimentary knowledge of the Lady... And yes, the one and only Rowena Ravenclaw, though she dislikes her last name as it reminds her of her family..."

"Oh... Bad family?" Sirius replied, somewhat subdued, remembering childhood at Grimmauld Place.

"When there are survivors rather than attendees of the obligatory meet the parents event... Yes." Rowena answered, leaning into Harry's embrace and gazing lovingly into his eyes; "My parents weren't out and out evil, they were awful though. When Harry and I went to meet them, my bastard father attempted to poison Harry while binding my soul and magic to a marriage contract, when that failed, the man he tried to entrap me with attempted to rape me. Harry lost his temper and called them both out on a two-on-one honour duel. Neither survived."

"The most failsafe way to end up dead at my hands is to insult or hurt Rowena. Your mother's portrait learnt that the hard way, Sirius. There are few things that truly give me reason for my life, Rowena comes at the very top of that very short list." Harry said seriously.

"Order meeting!" exclaimed Remus, clutching at the pendant.

Harry once again traced the location of the summons through the phoenix ring, conjured a handful of rocks and transferred the location to a Portkey Enchantment on the rocks and threw them at Sirius, Remus and Salazar before activating his own, still with an arm around Rowena.

Appearing just outside the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry and Rowena followed the other three into the kitchen, awaiting the arrival of the rest of the Order. Dumbledore was already seated at one end of the table as Sirius took the seat at the far end, Harry quickly transfigured it into a throne he had seen in Aachen during his travels with a Timeturner, distinctly making Sirius' end the head of the table as the only Black by name.

As Moody thumped in, Harry bowed slightly at the waist. His respect for the old Auror was immense, having seen him in combat, his lethality was near that of Harry and Salazar, high powered blasting and cutting curses and some darker internal curses sprayed at the Death Eaters from him.

Moody acknowledged the bow with a nod of his own, recognising the sign of respect between two warriors. Harry had the foresight to pull up his hood before activating his Portkey. Rowena and Salazar hadn't, despite a mental nudge, Rowena decided not to bother while he hissed at Salazar

§Hood Salazar.§

§Not like anyone will recognise me...§ Salazar replied.

§Apart from being pretty much a twin for Harry Potter who is both famous and missing, presumed dead.§ Harry hissed back irritably.

In English, Salazar asked "Any bets on our little skirmish Templar?"

"Twenty Galleons on three dead in every four, seventy-five percent fatality rate." Harry replied immediately

"Very well, I'll put thirty on ninety percent fatality rate as very few survive the core removal spell." Salazar agreed; "Shall we pick up a few more trainees from the Order as honestly, save a few, they are useless, you can't stun a Death Eater when a dozen of his fellows will simply awaken him and continue fighting. Honestly, which spineless moron used a tickling hex?! I know as Battle Mages we have a bit of freedom as to our spell repertoire and only about half of your creations are acknowledged spells by the Ministry."

That moment an owl flew into the kitchen bearing a letter with the Gringotts seal. Circling twice, it landed on Harry's shoulder. Quickly taking the letter, Harry checked it for curses or dangerous substances before slitting it open. After a moment of reading, a smirk spread across his face before he handed it to Sirius who commented in a sombre voice;

"It appears the Malfoy line has ended, may it rest in pieces of it's darkened reputation. Lucius died during this summer as we know, it appears that the Malfoy brat met his end this morning. As Narcissa is barren, the Malfoy fortune has passed to the Black family and not to Bellatrix but the main male line..." he said, avoiding the fact that Harry was Head of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black.

"Hah! Thus ends my feud with the Malfoy family." catching Sirius' glance, Harry continued; "988 AD, I was an emissary from King Æthelred to a senior cleric at Saint Étienne in Paris where I met Arnaud du Malfoi... I'd had a bad day and he insulted my horse. I turned him into an albino ferret and bounced him up and back down the central aisle of the cathedral. All Malfoy's I have met have been blonde-haired self-centred narcissistic ferret-faced invading Gauls. Unlike the Blacks, the Potters and several other families, the Malfoy family wasn't based in England. They constantly tried to establish themselves over here as major nobility as their social status in France wasn't particularly high."

By now, Sirius was slumped in his chair, roaring with laughter, Rowena, Fleur and a woman he failed to recognise were giggling uncontrollably. Remus, Bill Weasley and even Alastor Moody were sniggering at Harry's tale. Dumbledore and several Aurors he recognised were having a hard time restraining their amusement and Salazar simply smirked. Again.

"While the deaths are unfortunate;" said Dumbledore; "The gain of the Malfoy fortune and properties for the Black family is excellent, our coffers are not infinite."

"I believe that I can assist with monetary problems headmaster;" Harry commented; "In around 995 AD, I had five-hundred thousand Galleons in my main vault. That was a few years after I bought the land for Hogwarts to be built on for a mere five hundred Galleons. I offered a handsome commission to the Goblin family which would invest and maintain my account so I expect over the last millennium to have made a fair amount of money."

"Very well. The Dark Lord no doubt intended that the raid today would cause a large amount of damage to our economy without revealing the Death Eaters. Perhaps it could be passed off as an accident or minor arson gone wrong but I doubt the Minister would acknowledge the return of Voldemort." Dumbledore continued; "The first report came in a short while ago of fifteen survivors from their attack force of a hundred."

Harry sniffed imperiously before throwing a small pouch of coins to Salazar who continued smirking. 'Irritating snake.' thought Harry.

"The Minister continues to block us?" asked one of the unknown Order members.

"Indeed, Dolores Umbridge is imposing her will on the castle, not teaching anything about defence while restricting the students while my political capital is drained. I suspect her of using a blood quill on several students but I cannot do anything about it." Dumbledore sighed.

Harry paled under his hood and stiffened, as Salazar and Rowena also did. Murderous with fury, he activated the catapult ward at Hogwarts through the Hogwarts Ring before launching Umbridge out of the grounds and barring her entry ever again.

"Oh dear... It appears the Master of the Hogwarts wards has expelled Dolores Umbridge from the castle. I suspect that the use of a torture instrument on the Hogwart's students annoyed him or her." said Harry sarcastically; "I suspect that the current power of the wards means that she will land in the North Sea, not in the Pacific as I originally designed them to do. Shame, looks like you need a new Defence Professor."

"Would you be willing to fill the position?" asked Dumbledore.

"Are you joking me! I have a war to fight and apart from on the subjects of Soul Magic, Necromancy and Blood Magic, I have more knowledge of restricted magic than Riddle. Even in those subjects I have some tricks he doesn't know. When I can hang up the sword I would enjoy teaching once more but I am a Battle Mage, for the moment I hunt Dark Wizards and train more Mages." Harry responded, sounding incredulous; "Eagle, you probably know a few unrestricted spells which aren't my creations, why don't you teach again?"

"I'll consider it." Rowena answered.

Most of the Order hadn't noticed the beautiful young woman wearing dragonhide battlerobes and leaning into the one known as the Templar. As their eyes snapped to her, several began to gape at the woman. Dark hair, nearly black, tied back in a short ponytail, an elegant, beautiful and radiant face and sapphire eyes that simply bored into them. For those that could either see or sense a person's power, she, while not as powerful as her companions, still radiated magical energy.

"Your qualifications?" sneered Snape.

"Taught by Salazar Slytherin, Godric Gryffindor and the Earl of Templesbury in combat..." Rowena answered; "Godric and Templesbury taught me various weapon practices. Templesbury and Slytherin spent their time throwing bludgeoning hexes at me until I would dodge upon even seeing them enter a room before they began teaching me curses and Godric taught me battlefield transfiguration."

"Sufficient." Snape admitted.

"Next issue;" Harry said; "I would like Curse-breakers Weasley and Delacour, Aurors Tonks and Moody for a bit of training. Any objections?"

After a few moments of silence, Dumbledore finished;

"Very well, if there is nothing else? Meeting adjourned."

Quickly conjuring some balls of wood, Harry applied the Portkey enchantment, directed to a spot a hundred feet from the gatehouse. Quickly he threw them at Moody, Fleur, Bill, Sirius and Remus as Salazar activated his personal Portkey and he did the same, still holding Rowena to his side.

He landed elegantly next to a heap of tangled limbs as he, Salazar, Rowena and Moody looked on in amusement. After a few moments of struggling, Sirius, Remus managed to disentangle themselves and roll away. Tonks stood up to just fall back over moments later. Eventually everyone was stood up as Salazar was smirking widely and Harry was barely restraining a snigger.

"Now that everyone is stood, let us try to walk all the way to the castle..." Salazar commented snidely.

"By the way, Weasley, Delacour, you can try some passive scanning spells on my wards as they are on low level defence at the moment, don't use any invasive scanning as you'll be dead before you can say 'Oops!' and that would be unfortunate. BORIS!" Harry said before calling for his Nundu.

A few moments later and the powerfully built grey leopard bounded toward them, circling the group before coming up to Harry with an idiotic grin plastering the feline's face.

"Is that a...?" Bill said hesitantly.

"Yep, meet Boris, my pet Nundu." said Harry cheerfully; "Isn't he cute?"

Shocked silence and a slight giggle from Rowena was all that he got in the way of a reply to his comment. After a moment the group continued up to the castle until Harry halted them when Bill began firing ward scanning spells at the curtain wall.

"By Merlin! I have never seen this many wards in one place, let alone in my entire career!" he gasped.

"This is one of three layers Weasley, the outer one encompasses the entire estate, the middle one is on the curtain wall and the inner one is on the keep. This is low defence mode, there are a few dozen wards lying deactivated." said Salazar.

A dark purple eagle-like bird appeared in a burst of fire over Harry's head, clutching a roll of parchment in it's beak.

"Hey Cassius. What've you got for me?" asked Harry as the Imperial Phoenix circled him before landing on his shoulder.

Taking the missive, he ran his wand over it several times before slitting it open. Swelling up with rage, Harry's aura manifested slightly as the parchment burst into black flames.

"The Wizengamot wants to posthumously sentence the Potter scion to death for murdering Malfoy and Nott Senior along with a range of discrimination laws which include muggleborns not allowed to own businesses, Veela have to have a 'Respectable Pureblood' sponsor to be here and if they don't, they can be 'claimed' by the purists, so that discounts the Weasley family as they aren't blood purists. Sal, Row?" Harry commented.

Rowena reached into a pocket and threw a small ring in the air, Harry caught it and pocketed it as Salazar copied her actions. With the Ravenclaw and Slytherin rings, he could vote as proxy for both seats which had been carried over from the Wizard's Council to the Wizengamot.

"Sal, you know what to do, here are my memories, also, get one of the elves to deliver the basilisk hide battlerobes, holsters and suchlike. Get Moody sorted out and find the Mage Sight potion." Harry said, throwing a handful of crystal vials to Salazar, before hissing; "Don't let Delacour leave the estate until I have dealt with the anti-Veela laws. Nobody messes with my friends..."

Disillusioning Boris and Cassius, he grabbed them both and apparated to the corridor outside the chambers of the Wizard's Council, now the Wizengamot Chambers.

'God it's been a long time since I was here as a combat unspeakable.' Harry thought.

Fudge was in the middle of a diatribe against himself and Dumbledore, though not directly mentioning the latter.

"The brat murders honest members of society, obviously we need to deal with his friends as well as he will have indoctrinated them!" ranted Fudge.

Firing an immensely powerful banishing charm at the doors, Harry allowed his aura to fill the chamber, throwing the left side of his cloak behind him, revealing the gleaming blades hanging at his side while distinctly grasping his wand in his right hand.

"ENOUGH! I tire of you already Fudge!" he bellowed.

"HOW DARE YOU!" screeched one of the Minister's sycophants.

"I DARE AS THE HOLDER OF SEVERAL SEATS ON THIS ONCE ESTEEMED COUNCIL! MALFOY, BLACK, POTTER, FITZPOTTER-TEMPLESBURY AND PROXY SLYTHERIN AND RAVENCLAW. YOU ALLOW BLOOD PURITY EXTREMISM TO TURN THIS COUNCIL, FOUNDED TO SAFEGUARD BRITAIN, INTO A NEST OF HATRED AND DISCRIMINATION!" Harry thundered; "Those of us who remember the Royal High Albion Wizard's Council remember safeguarding all who live within her borders, who served the country and her people. We were not a hornet's nest of purists and hatred for other races and those who stated the truth!"

"THEY ARE LIARS, HALFBREEDS AND CREATURES!" screeched the sycophant.

"POTTER WAS A BASTION OF THE TRUTH! THE DARK LORD ANCHORED HIS SOUL TO THIS WORLD AND RETURNED EARLIER THIS YEAR! YOU ARE BLIND, I HAVE JUST COME FROM DISPOSING OF A DEATH EATER ATTACK WHERE THE MALFOY HEIR DIED, PASSING HIS LORDSHIP TO THE BLACK LINE."

Someone rose from one of the seats and screamed; "Avada Ked-"

Harry fired of a bludgeoning hex and removed the disillusionment charm from the Nundu and Phoenix accompanying him.

"Moron. Now which of you is responsible for this travesty, these laws of discrimination?"

"I, Dolores Jane Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister am responsible for protecting the pure lines and restraining those of less than human status." proudly stated the toad-like sycophant.

"Umbridge eh? The one torturing students in my school with blood quills? I thought my wards banished you into the North Sea, should have taken longer for you to get back... Shame but not to worry, I, the Earl of Templesbury do challenge Umbridge to a duel to the death for corrupting the purpose of this council, for pushing a discriminatory policy, for insult to a senior Lord, for torturing students at Hogwarts Castle. Let no holds be barred, no curse restricted." Harry commented, glaring at Umbridge from beneath his hood.

The toad-like woman waddled into the centre of the eerily quiet chamber, drawing a stubby wand from her pocket.

"I accept. I give you a chance to surrender and never return!" she shrieked.

Harry simply shouted; "Begin!"

Quickly casting a reflective shield a short distance behind her, he fired a low powered cutting curse at it. It bounced back and slashed into her back, causing a painful surface wound as he blasted off her left hand with a reductor curse.

"You made students bleed from their hand, I remove yours." Harry taunted.

A sickly yellow light streamed at him from Umbridge. 'The flesh flaying curse' Harry thought, remembering Irwin of Norwich's downfall. Conjuring a marble shield, he allowed it to block the curse before blasting it into shards of stone and transfiguring them into barbed arrowheads before banishing them at her. Firing several lightning bolts, he electrified each arrowhead as they slammed into their target. A final trio of piercing hexes hit her in the head, neck and chest, destroying her brain, her throat, spine and her heart.

Striding to the centre of the chamber, Harry slowly reached down and placed his wand tip on the floor. Pulling it up, a stone pillar emerged from the floor.

"Chamber! Send those who bear the slave mark of Tom Marvolo Riddle to the Council cells. The crown declares those who truly serve Tom Marvolo Riddle, otherwise known as the Dark Lord Voldemort, outlaws in the eyes of magic. So mote it be!" Harry called.

Near a quarter of the seated members vanished from the chamber before Harry continued;

"Under my authority as Crown representative, Castellan of Hogwarts, Proxy Lord Slytherin, Proxy Lord Ravenclaw, Lord Black, Lord Potter, Lord FitzPotter; The Earl of Templesbury, I remove Cornelius Oswald Fudge from the ruling seat of this council and any positions within the governing body of Albion. He is hereby replaced by Madam Amelia Susan Bones, Regent Lady Bones. Lord Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is appointed Chief Warlock of the High Albion Wizengamot. So mote it be!"

A bell sounded somewhere in the depths of the chamber and Fudge vanished from the chamber and Dumbledore was moved from the Dumbledore seat to the Chief Warlock's Lectern as Amelia Bones gained the Ministerial Chain of Office.

"Good luck Chief Warlock, good luck Madam Minister, you'll need it. Get rid of the corrupt, remove the laws that discriminate, return England to somewhere on the International stage, it is at the moment a laughing stock. Bring it to glory, bring it to honesty and equality." Harry said, bowing before striding out with his pets in tow.

The moment he was out of sight, Harry apparated away with Boris and Cassius, landing in the Great Hall of Templesbury castle. Salazar and Rowena were stood looking at Harry's absorption pensieve. As they saw Harry appear in the centre of the hall, Salazar cocked a questioning eyebrow and Rowena walked over to him, allowing herself to be enveloped in his arms.

"I got rid of Fudge, killed his Undersecretary for using a flesh flaying curse, probably killed another for trying to use a killing curse on me. Any with the Dark Mark are now in the old cells below the Council Chamber. Dumbledore is once again Chief Warlock while Amelia Bones is the Minister." Harry replied to Salazar's silent question.

A few short minutes later and the Order members were ejected from the pensieve. Drawing his wand, Harry hit Sirius, Remus and Moody with sleeping spells before wrapping them in a rope, grabbing the rope and reaching under his robes. Finding the golden pendant, Harry spun the central piece of it six times and vanished.

The Great Hall was empty and the castle silent as Harry levitated his charges through the doors to the entrance hall. Quickly unlocking the door to the dungeon, he strode down, carefully holding the unconscious men above him with a levitation charm.

In the dim vaulted room were several trenches gouged out of the stone, filled with a slightly viscous, clear liquid. Removing Moody's false eye and false leg, Harry conjured a one-piece closed robe over each of them before banishing their clothes to stone benches next to them. He then cast a respiration charm on each of them before tipping them into the trenches and conjuring curtains between each.

Apparating out to one of the spare bedrooms, Harry quickly warded it heavily before collapsing on the bed and hit himself with a sleeping charm, timed to wear off in five and a half hours, as not to create a situation where the time-turning Harry was seen by the other.

Near six hours later, Harry awoke and quickly raced down to the dungeons and laid out basilisk hide and acromantula silk battlerobes and hooded cloaks for each person to wear, each sized to them. A few moments of hunting and he found some under-robes, socks and underwear of acromantula silk and three basilisk hide wand holsters and belts which were added to the piles next to the regenerating baths.

A few minutes later and the three awoke from their six hour sleep in the baths and could be heard splashing about slightly.

"Don't worry, I conjured the one-piece robes over you before banishing your clothes. That is a regenerating bath made of a combination of the Elixir of Life, a modified bone-regrowing potion and mixture of healing potions. Moody, you should now have both legs, your entire nose and your eye. Lupin, you shouldn't have the injuries and strains of being a werewolf, Black, you should be healed from your time in Azkaban." Harry called out.

A few minutes later and Sirius, Remus and Moody were stood in front of him, decked out in the dark green and black robes, boots and cloaks he had provided. Moody now hand a fuller face without his many scars, had both eyes and both legs. His scraggly grey-blonde hair was a rich blonde colour and thickened massively. Neither Sirius nor Remus had changed as much, though both had built out somewhat and lost Remus had lost the scars he had gained as a werewolf.

"Excellent, we'll go back up now and join the others." Harry commented approvingly.

After a short walk, Harry sealed the dungeons and lead the three into the Great Hall where Tonks, Fleur and Bill gaped as Rowena and Salazar looked on in interest.

"Combined healing potions, bone, flesh, muscle and nerve regeneration potions and the Elixir of Life from my philosopher's stone. I'm looking at a full cure for Lycanthropy, it will need invasive legilimency and blood cleansing at least, it may take a while for me to develop it." Harry said.

He summoned several more sets of battlerobes, including acromantula silk undergarments, underwear and cloak with basilisk hide lining along with the chainmail, acromantula silk and basilisk hide robes themselves.

"Everyone use a switching spell and get these on. We're arming up, I assume my absorption pensieve has worked. Tonight the Order goes on the offensive. I extracted some information from Walden Macnair, leaving him a vegetable. We have several Death Eater hideouts. We don't know where the Dark Lord is, but Macnair Manor, Malfoy Manor and Rookwood Hall are being used as bases while there are several smaller properties in use." he barked; "You probably know our names from the memories, Salazar, Rowena and Arlyss or Harry. We know who you lot are so no need for any introductions. Armoury, now. Sal and Row are keyed into the central ward now and can apparate through the castle. Sirius, Remus, your items are still on the head table."

Harry grabbed Moody and apparated them to the armoury where he picked out a single spare wand, a long-bladed stiletto and a cross-hilted claymore. A minute later and Salazar apparated in with Tonks, Fleur and Bill decked out in basilisk hide armour. Fleur quickly pulled a kilij he had acquired from Turkey off the rack and put it in the corresponding sheath and clipped it onto her belt. Tonks pulled a short, rapier-like sword from the rack as Bill took a hand-and-a-half sword. Each took a simple cross-hilted dagger and a spare wand off the racks.

Apparating everyone back to the Great Hall, Harry began a quick briefing;

"Okay, we are all kitted out. Get a few hours kip, it's about midday and we are hitting several bases tonight. Should things go well, our first target will be attacked at a quarter to eleven. Going in at a random time is unpredictable instead of at each hour. I hope Rookwood Hall, Malfoy and Macnair Manors cease to exist by tonight. Sal, you take Tonks, Delacour and Lupin, I'll take Moody, Weasley, Black and Row. If you get the chance to legilimens anyone, do not hesitate. Intelligence is intelligence and we need it. Hopefully we can dispose of some more Death Eaters. Also, Sal, you have the expanded trunk? If you get the chance, looting is always good for us."

"We'll go in outside the wards, Sal and I have masteries in ward placing and breaking, Delacour and Weasley in the nature of their work ought to know a bit about it. We make a gateway through the wards, place our own anti-travel and containment wards. I recommend that we start at opposite ends of the locations and do a sweep, mind-rape any Death Eaters worthwhile, dispose of the others or bind them and Portkey them into the Ministry. Finally we simply burn each location to the ground, I don't want these places falling back into the hands of the Dark Lord. We move out at ten-thirty."

Harry showed them each to their rooms with a recommendation to sleep for a while and that he'd get them up in time before going with Rowena to his own room. Simply collapsing onto the bed with his beautiful love in his arms, Harry, instead of sleeping once again, sank into a state of meditation, continuing to sort through the memories from Macnair. While most were thrown away, he quickly filed a large section on Death Eaters, tactics, members of the Ministry supporting the Death Eaters or holding membership.

Having completed his sorting, Harry continued to create channels from his magical core to the surface of his mind, allowing him more access to his power. Having spent around four hours in meditation, he quietly slipped out of the bed, leaving Rowena asleep.

Turning on the spot, he apparated to the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts where Dumbledore was sat behind his desk.

"Professor." Harry began, nodding respectfully.

"Harry, when in private, I insist you call me Albus." cut off the Headmaster; "I took in your rant before the Wizengamot, I truly hope to live up to your wishes. I hope we can turn the tide of this war and destroy Tom."

"Very well Albus. I too hope that we can cleanse Tom from this earth and stop Britain being a breeding ground for Dark Lords." Harry replied.

"What do you know of Horcruxes?" asked Dumbledore.

"Foul, black magic, a perversion of nature, going against fate itself..." Harry spat; "I believe that my scar was one until I took the Potter and Black rings. I have prepared for this eventuality, in the Slytherin Library was a book on the subject, I read it thoroughly before destroying the memories of most of it. There is a spell called soul fire which targets parts of the soul outwith the body, if I could hit Tom with this spell, no more Horcruxes... Tom also probably didn't realise that he also separated his magical core, though he still has access to the power. If we destroy all of his Horcruxes, he will be reduced to less than 1% of his current power..."

"What do you mean?" asked Dumbledore.

"Albus, he had 100% power and soul. When he made the diary, he had _in his body_ 50% power and soul. The next Horcrux reduced him to 25% power and soul. I know that he had an obsession with the number seven, though he actually ended up having eight pieces of his soul. He is already down by about 51% of his power with the destruction of the Horcrux in me and his diary."

"Indeed, I must say that is a relief, perhaps he has yet to find out why he is so much less powerful which is why he didn't go on an immediate murderous rampage." Albus mused; "If there is anything I can assist you with...?"

"There is something you can do. I extracted some intelligence from Macnair, while I do not enjoy mind-raping and mind-shredding people, I got some interesting knowledge. I'm hitting Malfoy Manor, Macnair Manor and Rookwood Hall tonight and some minor locations. If all goes well, we can extract information from further Death Eaters and, from Macnair, I know where Greyback is. Without him, the Death Eater wolves will be leaderless and most of the other packs will fall aside."

"I shall accompany you Harry. Such successes would be brilliant, without Greyback, no wolf will side with Voldemort. Also the Macnair family is quite well off and denying their support..." Dumbledore answered.

"Agreed, however, Salazar and I will be leading the attacks, you will have to take orders from the leader of whichever team you are on. He and I have raided castles and manors before and, though your combat capability is not doubted, I haven't heard of you participating in night-time raids on manors." Harry said sharply before throwing a silver medallion onto the desk; "Here is a Portkey to the staging area, it'll activate at ten o'clock, we hit our first target at 11 o'clock so you have about five hours."

He apparated away again, heading for Grimmauld Place's Library. Landing down the hallway, he quickly cast some ward scanning spells and was unsurprised to see powerful blood wards with minor lightning wards triggered off them. It took Harry all of ten seconds to create a gap in the wards and step through.

Summoning several books on Necromancy, Harry burnt them with Fiendfyre as they flew to him. After a few minutes of searching and Harry was deeply engrossed on a book of borderline Dark Magic and duelling technique. Only when the conjured bracelet on his wrist vibrated did Harry look up. It had been near five hours since he'd arrived and dived into the book.

Harry rose from the desk and apparated out to the Great Hall of Templesbury Castle where he dashed through a doorway set into one of the walls. A few moments later and the deep reverberating tone of the bell rang out over the castle.

Dumbledore appeared in a swirl of light from the Portkey he'd been given. Harry immediately used a switching spell to cover his grey-blue robes with basilisk hide armour and an acromantula silk and basilisk hide cloak. Within a few short minutes, everyone was assembled in the Great Hall and Harry rose from his chair to speak to them;

"Our first target is Malfoy Manor, Albus has kindly agreed to accompany us, he's on my team. Remember, there is a cache of Dark Arts artefacts and questionable items under the drawing room floor of the manor. If any of you are proficient legilimens, do not hesitate to use it to extract information." Harry announced.

The group nodded solemnly as Harry and Salazar created Portkeys out of conjured bracelets, targeted at a clearing a hundred feet from the ward-line of Malfoy Manor. They sat in tense silence until, after around twenty minutes, Salazar handed out the bracelets before announcing;

"Time to go, everyone, these are two way Portkeys, one way to Malfoy Manor, one way back in case you are injured. We massively overpowered the Portkey enchantment so it should be able to take you through most anti-Portkey wards."

They each took a bracelet and placed it on their wrists. Five minutes later the Portkeys activated and deposited them in a dark clearing, illuminated by the moon, hung high in the sky.

"Mage sight! Sal, back entrance, signal to go is one pulse!" Harry hissed.

Salazar made his way out through the darkness, followed by his team. Near fifteen minutes of silence passed before Harry pushed out a small magical charge from his body, creating a pulse that Salazar could sense.

"Anti-travel and containment wards! Now!" he barked.

Rowena and Dumbledore quickly raised numerous wards encompassing the entire estate as Harry ripped a hole through the main ward-scheme. He whistled slightly and gestured forward before applying concealment charms on himself.

Stalking across the field to the gates, Harry was slightly nervous, there were no guards patrolling or traps set around the estate. At the main gates, he found magical alarms, triggered if any magic was performed within a radius of ten feet. Pulling a Dane axe from a pocket in his robes and swung it twice into the point where the hinges met the wooden gateposts. Two swings and the gate hung at a crazy angle as only the lower hinge held it up. This too was solved with several swings of the axe and the elegant metal gate collapsed onto the ground.

Stalking up the drive, Harry dropped two guards with bludgeoning hexes to the back before rifling through their minds for anything of use. Neither was particularly important, though he gained good information on the layout of the building and it's occupants. Dumbledore bound them both in ropes before Harry threw Portkeys to the ministry at them.

While there were some fairly nasty wards on the front door, it took barely a minute to break through them. A localised silencing spell followed by an obliteration curse from Rowena turned the door into dust. Four Death Eaters were quickly hit by bludgeoning hexes, mind-raped, bound and Portkeyed to the ministry. Harry quickly sent off a patronus message to Amelia Bones, alerting her to prisoners arriving in the Ministry Atrium.

Taking care to repair the door behind them, Harry led the team deeper into the manor. A few Death Eaters patrolling the hallways were quickly taken down before being sent to the Ministry. Some fairly valuable antiques such as vases, candlesticks and weapons were summoned, shrunk and pocketed by Harry and Rowena.

Arriving outside a pair of heavily warded double doors, Harry hissed;

"Moody, cover us, Dumbledore, Weasley, Row, we need to break down this ward!"

After a minute of near continuous casting, the wards fell in a soft flash of light and the door was blasted aside by Harry's banishing charm. Inside was the immense Malfoy Library. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he pulled the Potter Vault-Library trunk from his neck, expanded it and summoned the entire library into it before returning it to his neck.

"I'll sort the contents later, I expect to burn quite a bit of it." Harry whispered at Dumbledore's pointed look.

It took half an hour but the ground floor was soon clear of Death Eaters. Some had simply been killed, some subdued and Portkeyed to the Ministry and some reduced to vegetable status by concentrated legilimency.

Making their way to the drawing room, Harry quickly subdued a Death Eater as he clambered out from the trapdoor in the floor. Under the shattered mask of the Inner Circle Death Eaters was the bulldog-faced Yaxley. Harry calmly pointed his wand at the Death Eater and intoned;

"Legilimens!"

Soon he was soaring through the vile mindscape of the Death Eater, shredding his mind as he went along. There! He found an immense source of information and five more safe houses. Every department in the Ministry was riddled with collaborators and Death Eaters. Each had a name, each had a face.

Withdrawing, Harry simply raised his wand again and cast the heart attack curse. Moments later as Bill leapt through the trapdoor, a loud alarm blared across the manor. Harry quickly followed him down, creating Portkeys left, right and centre and sending the numerous prisoners to St. Mungo's after applying powerful sleeping and stasis charms to them.

A final door was hit by two obliteration hexes and Lucius Malfoy's Dark Arts collection was quickly placed in a trunk under powerful stasis and containment charms before being shrunk.

"Fall back to the ward line! Full lethality!" Harry barked.

Racing up the ladder and out of the trapdoor, he fired two killing curses at the two doors at opposite ends of the wall in front of him. Both collapsed soundlessly as the jets of green light impacted them. Firing three blasting curses at the outer wall, Harry vaulted over the rubble, dodging a falling chandelier that he cut down with a cutting curse.

A ribbon cutting curse slashed a three-man patrol in half as Rowena and Moody blew up the pillars supporting the façade of the front wall. Another Death Eater came charging round a rose bush and doubled over as he was hit in the stomach by the butt of Harry's Dane axe before the axehead swung over and cut deeply along his spine. Another took a firm blow to the stomach before Harry shrank and pocketed the axe, diving for the wand which had been knocked from his hand.

Finally a mental message from Rowena said that everyone had made it out on their team and were beyond the wards. A few long moments later and green sparks lit up the far side of the estate. Firing a veritable stream of blasting curses around him, Harry dashed away from the ravaged manor, ducking killing curses as he made it to the waiting team before drawing a second wand and conjuring the cursed fire. Fiendfyre.

The entire estate was engulfed as Dumbledore, Moody and Rowena conjured streams of Fiendfyre and Salazar on the other side did the same. The Malfoy Estate was turned into an apocalyptic wasteland by the massive conflagration that immolated everything within the wards. Finally, Harry held a wand high, still pouring Fiendfyre from the other, and hissed loudly;

"Morsmorde!"

The skull and serpent appeared in all its hateful glory before Harry fired blue sparks into the air and called out;

"Portkey back to the castle!"

Within a short time, the entire team was stood in the Great Hall. Apart from Harry's team being coated in plaster dust, they were completely untouched. Harry held a whispered conversation with Salazar before they turned to the others.

"We're holding off further operations until tomorrow night except for one small hit. Malfoy Manor has been looted, we have the entire library, an incredible Dark Arts collection and intelligence extracted from two senior Death Eaters." Salazar announced.

"Indeed, once we have had a chance to review and examine our intelligence, we will launch further attacks. If you want to stay here for tonight, feel free. Moody, Lupin with us!" Harry added.

Once huddled in a corner with Rowena, Remus and Moody, under privacy charms, Salazar produced a length of ribbon from his robes.

"One hit, this is a twenty minute job, kill on sight. Expect Greyback, I want full lethality, Harry and I won't hold back. Location is an abandoned barn on a muggle farm. Harry will hit it with some Battle Magic, Rowena will attack with Fiendfyre _when _signalled. Our job is to contain the wolves and kill them all."

They all grabbed onto the ribbon and vanished from the castle. They landed once again in a field, this time looking toward a dilapidated barn of simple wooden boards stretching between the timber frames. The roof was made of red tiles, often with patches of them missing.

Harry advanced until they were within fifty feet of the building before firing two trebuchet curses at the roof. The curses mimicked the effect of the siege engine, firing heavy rocks at an incredible velocity through the roof. His next act was the arrow storm curse, pictured, instead of barbed arrows but heavy, thin crossbow bolt heads, coated in silver. The rotten, collapsing and missing panels of wood allowing the heavy metal bolts to easily pass through it. A quick reflection ward applied to the interior of the building meant that until the bolts would ricochet around until they hit flesh.

He launched three more volleys of the Battle Magic and dozens of internal curses such as organ liquefying, heart attack and brain blasting curses fired by Remus, Salazar and Moody through the gaping hole in the roof. Finally holding his hand up to order a ceasefire, Harry summoned Greyback with a simple summoning charm. The hulking mass that rocketed through the roof was shot down by a heart attack curse from Remus and a killing curse from both Salazar and Harry.

Greyback came to rest near them. He'd been peppered with crossbow bolt heads, hit by at least one organ liquefying curse and the spells he had seen him be hit by mere moments before. Greyback was dead. Very dead. Very very dead. All organs destroyed, body turned into a pincushion and several other curses.

"Rowena, burn it to the ground, then back to the castle. I'm heading by the Ministry." Harry ordered before grabbing Greyback and apparating away, but not before casting the Dark Mark.

Landing in the Ministry Atrium, he was unsurprised to see chaos reigning as Aurors ran back and forth. Death Eaters, looking distinctly worse for wear from bludgeoning hexes, were lying tied up around the Fountain of Magical Brethren. Spotting a harassed looking Madam Bones, Harry strode over, hauling Greyback by the back of his shirt with ease.

Approaching, he threw Greyback's corpse onto the Atrium floor a few feet from Amelia Bones.

"Madam Bones, my apologies for having you out of bed this early or late, depending on how you see it. I thought you might like to see the first stages of this war being played out. How many prisoners did I send to you?" Harry asked.

"Yes Sir;" Madam Bones began, feeling once again like a first-term Auror recruit before this immensely powerful man; "Around two-hundred alive and thirty dead have been sent to us tonight. Most of them have been brought down by bludgeoning hexes though a few show signs of darker curses. May I ask who this is or was?"

"The late maniac, murderous, psychopathic Fenrir Greyback. He is dead from at least; two killing curses, one heart attack curse and the effects of being trapped in a building with three separate castings of the arrow storm Battle Spell. I sincerely hope that all of these poor Death Eaters are checked _properly _for the Imperius curse and should they be under it, not be sentenced to death." Harry said blandly before gently kissing her hand with a slight bow; "Have a good day Madam Bones, I hope that the Ministry is doing all to remove the Death Eater filth infestation from it's ranks."

He apparated out to Templesbury castle to find Bill Weasley barely sustaining a duelling ward as curses flew from Rowena to Salazar who was desperately blocking them. Rowena was evidently upset as she was pale with fury and casting far faster and far more lethally than she would in a friendly duel.

Harry quickly inscribed a channelling rune into the floor to sustain the ward before approaching Bill.

"What sparked this off?" he asked exasperatedly; Salazar and Rowena often had disagreements resulting in duels.

"The one you call Sal made an offhand comment about how 'Mrs Templesbury' should not be out raiding at night but helping around the castle..." Bill replied.

Harry sighed before raising his wand to his throat to amplify his voice;

"SALAZAR SLYTHERIN! I DON'T MIND YOU BEING A SARCASTIC BRAT BUT INSULT MY LOVE AND I WILL BEAT YOU LIKE A DRUM AS I DID AT THE TOURNAMENT IN 986 WITH A BLUDGEONING HEX TO THE FACE AND SEVERAL BANISHING CHARMS TO THE CHEST!" he bellowed; "NOW THE BOTH OF YOU STOP FIGHTING! SALAZAR, GET A GIRL AND YOU'LL LEARN NEVER TO INSULT THEM, MAYHAP A RELATIONSHIP WOULD STOP YOU BEING A MORON!"

The two duellers halted as Harry yelled at them. Sirius and Remus were unsurprised by the name he used while Bill and Fleur, the only others remaining, gaped. Rowena turned and swept away from Salazar, before halting a dozen feet away and called out sweetly;

"Salazar dearest, dodge!"

A bludgeoning hex slammed into Salazar's crotch. While much of it was absorbed by his armour, he still crumpled to the floor in pain. Bill muttered from next to him;

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

"You have no idea Weasley. Sal enjoyed riling up Row before retreating to the Chamber of Secrets. Until I simply opened it for Row on one occasion and set his basilisk on him on another occasion. Though he was less than pleased when Row and I built a girl's toilets on top of the entrance. I tell you though, the one time invaders breeched Hogwarts, Sal's basilisk undoubtedly was responsible for a victory without any losses from the Hogwarts population." Harry replied.

"But... Everyone knows that he put it there to cleanse muggleborns from Hogwarts!" Bill protested.

Harry scowled; "History hates him as a Dark Lord. His full name is Ares Salazar Slytherin, though by the time his little brother, Salazar junior was born, he already went by Sal instead of Ares. Salazar junior's line leads right down to Tom Marvolo Riddle, the Dark Lord Voldemort. The famous duel with Godric was actually a prank war over a period of three moons... His hatred of muggleborns is untrue, though he did dislike many non-magicals as they were fairly barbarian at the time. When you were in the absorption pensieve, you didn't actually see the memories but your subconscious recorded the skills used in them. At some point I may share some of the things Salazar and I did, fighting against Dark Wizards."

"If you and 'Row' are contemporaries of Salazar Slytherin, how are you still alive?" asked Bill curiously.

Harry decided it was time for another half-truth;

"Ever heard of a legendary alchemical device known as the philosopher's stone?" he said, amused; "Oh and 'Row' is my nickname for Rowena Ravenclaw, who, when this war is over, I intend to marry."

After a few moments of fish impressions by Bill, he asked a question which brought Harry's near euphoric mood to a crashing halt;

"I've had Mage Sight for several years and Fleur has the Veela version and both of us recognise your aura, though neither of us can remember where we have encountered you before..."

"I have been through three magical maturations, gained an animagus form with it's own magic and I can control my aura completely, so I would doubt you would recognise me..." Harry replied with a non-answer.

After a few minutes of glaring from Bill, Harry slowly slid back the hood of his cloak. With raven-black hair tied back in a short ponytail, with the lightning bolt scar displayed on his forehead, though it was thin and a slight pink. Otherwise, the only distinctly _Harry Potter_ features were the emerald eyes.

"There are reasons that my identity for the moment is merely as the Templar, Bill. Other than Dumbledore, those aware of my survival are in this room." Harry said gravely before flipping the hood back up; "Do not make me regret giving you this information. Lighter topics however, Salazar! A duel?"

A few seconds later and the duelling piste had been raised from the floor and the two duellers were stood stock still opposite each other, awaiting the other's move. Salazar twitched his wand slightly and Harry almost simultaneously raised a mage shield and firing a blasting curse at Salazar. A lightning bolt arced from Serpent to Templar, dissipating on the immensely powerful translucent shield. The blasting curse was easily deflected into the wards surrounding them, the shockwave of it's detonation rippling across the hall.

For the next few moments, which stretched into a long, tense silence for the duellers, neither moved, their wands trained on each other. Harry dropped to one side and rolled up onto his feet as another lightning bolt passed him before responding with all three unforgivable curses, the Greater Fire Elemental Curses and the Greater blasting and cutting curses.

Salazar conjured three massive granite walls before diving to one side as several curses blasted through his conjurations. Smashing them apart with the obliteration curse, he sent a series of decapitation curses mixed with blood boiling curses at Harry.

For an hour, the two wizards fought viciously, both with slashes across their armour and bruises beneath it. Eventually Harry used a lasso charm and reeled Salazar in before slamming the butt of his Dane axe into the back of Salazar's head, knocking him out cold. By now, the silk cloaks both were wearing were slashed to shreds, Harry's hood had been removed by a redirected sword-thrust which cut it off when Salazar pulled his sword away. Salazar's armour was pitted with cuts, though it was doubtful any had got through.

Harry had hit him on his wand arm with three bone-breaking hexes which were eagerly returned with much vigour, resulting in what he suspected was a cracked rib and a dislocated shoulder instead of what should have been shattered bone. He'd taken great, sadistic pleasure in firing bludgeoning curses at Salazar's face and crotch, not that they hadn't been returned with equal sadistic pleasure. Five arrowheads were lodged in the dragonhide armour over his chest and the snapped blade of a dagger protruded from Salazar's left arm.

Both had explored using illusions to conceal and outwit the other, combat magic to fight it out, transfiguration to attack and defend, charms to annoy, distract and disable one-another. They'd sometimes resorted to fighting with blades, axes and even unarmed combat where Salazar found a punch intercepted and moments later he was slammed over Harry's shoulder into the piste. They had only not ventured into the true darkest arts of dark blood magic, necromancy, soul magic and demonic arts. Everything else had been used, even rune magic as they had created runes out of fire and amplified curses through the prisms.

Allowing Rowena to fuss over him, he mainly blocked out her rant on 'battlefields being more peaceful than a friendly duel' and how she should throw him to his pet nundu instead of healing him. Though his armour would need replacing, something he intended to do anyway, upgrading to basilisk hide, Harry's wounds were easily healed although Rowena took great pleasure in forgetting numbing charms.

Standing up from the side of the piste, Harry spread his arms wide and announced;

"Master class in duelling provided by the Serpent and the Templar! Please don't bother asking to learn how to duel like that as nobody except Sal and I has that level of mastery over magic, even though we are retired and have been for years. I wouldn't even teach Dumbledore how to fight like that, he is an alchemist first and foremost, a fighter second. That and he doesn't have enough power to last as long as we did and doesn't like the number of fatal curses I know and use."

"How much do you know in the way of non-lethal?" Bill asked.

"About enough to take my OWLs and get a reasonably good score. However, cast at my usual power, even stunning spells are fatal. I will mention that I am wearing dragonhide armour which just stopped one of the most powerful mages in western history killing me, your armour is millennium matured basilisk hide and will be significantly better than this, which is being retired." Harry replied, wiping his hand across his forehead, unknowingly revealing the lightning bolt scar which had been covered by the hair which had come out of the ponytail during the fight.

Despite having seen the pair duelling a short time before, both Sirius and Remus were ashen faced while Bill and Fleur were white as ghosts with fright- and, in Fleur's case, shock as well when she saw the thin lightning bolt scar.

"Harry's got more fatal curses than most Dark Lords though..." added Salazar as he rose from the crumpled heap position he had previously occupied.

"Shut up Sal!" hissed Harry; "Or are you going to examine the intelligence alone for me tonight? Remember who taught you everything you know about combat... The great, revered, feared Salazar Slytherin turned from a brat from a family with a penchant for black magic to a dueller, mage and sorcerer of the highest level by little old me. I may be getting old in my retirement but I can still beat you like a drum, and in the case of this duel, beat your head like a drum... Now go and apologise to Rowena for your earlier comments like a good little slow worm."

Intercepting a fireball from somewhere behind him, Harry calmly created a stasis around it before hurling it back over his shoulder, choosing to ignore the Veela who had to execute an ungainly dive to avoid her own fireball.

"Come Harry, the night is early, what say you to a drink?" asked Salazar.

"Sal, you know my stance on drinking, I may be retired but I am still a Battle Mage and I have business to deal with upon the dawn. If you feel our small success tonight is worth becoming a drunkard, so be it." Harry answered sharply before turning on his heel and striding out.

Having liberated the trunk of loot from around Salazar's neck, Harry spent the next few hours stripping curses and protections from items gained from Malfoy Manor before transfiguring any coats of arms or insignia to the Templesbury crest. Most of the items gained including a small fortune in galleons were deposited in the castle treasury while any weapons, wands, shields and armour were placed in the armoury, suitably stripped of Malfoy insignia.

Harry's collection of weapons, concentrated on pre-medieval Europe was now updated with the medieval and renaissance periods through the looting of the Malfoy Ancestral Home. It was near dawn when he finally retired to his bed, slipping under the silken sheets and wrapping an arm around the most beautiful woman he knew, his Rowena.

Though he had slept little, Harry was awake and aware within three hours of going to sleep. After a light breakfast, he quickly summoned his father's invisibility cloak and attached it to him with a sticking charm before changing into his phoenix animagus form.

Summoning up the fire that resided deep in the magic of the phoenix, Harry projected himself to the upper corridors of Azkaban and transformed back into human form. Every man, every woman in the uppermost floor of the fortress had committed heinous crimes against nature, against their fellow human beings and against magic itself.

Disposing of them was a simple job. Walking past people like Bellatrix Lestrange, Harry simply erected a containment ward before casting a bubblehead charm over his head. A small amount of transfiguration replaced all the oxygen in the containment ward into carbon before returning to phoenix form and flaming out.

The transfiguration wasn't permanent, it would return to normal state within two hours, preventing any Aurors dying of oxygen deprivation by entering it on their daily rounds. Hopefully, no one would look for non-magical causes of death but instead concentrate on magical causes.

Once again, Harry transformed into human form before removing the sticking charm and sliding out from under the invisibility cloak. Rowena was alone in the Great Hall as Harry appeared from under his invisibility cloak.

"It is done?" she asked.

"It is done." Harry replied; "The Prewett brothers, Frank and Alice Longbottom, the McKinnons and countless others are avenged. Our coffers are expanding well, with the Black fortune being added to from the Malfoy coffers and Lestrange coffers while the worst Death Eaters out there are dead or dying."

"I look forward to the war ending where we can live without fear, live without hiding ourselves, where we can pit our considerable influence to making Britain a place to be proud of instead of a breeding ground for dark wizards." Rowena said.

Harry walked up to her and cupped her cheek in one hand;

"Where you can be mine, and I yours." he whispered before kissing her softly, an act eagerly reciprocated as the two lovers fought for dominance with their tongues, the air itself warming slightly with their passion.

"Morning lovebirds!" called Sirius as he strutted in, outfitted in a simple black dragonhide jacket, with a sunburst compass sewn into the front, silk trousers and dragonhide boots.

Harry broke the kiss after several long moments of ignoring his godfather before glaring balefully;

"Get laid Sirius, surely the great Casanova of Gryffindor can get a woman if his runty teenager godson manages to earn Rowena...?" Harry commented scathingly.

"Runty godson with more Lordships than is reasonable, has a castle of his own, a massive fortune, built like an god and is capable of being a one-man war..." Rowena added adoringly.

"Hey hey! Most of the women outside the Order think I'm an escaped convict... Not good for chat up lines." Sirius replied.

"I intend on getting you cleared in a way that will benefit the Bones administration Sirius. I need an opportune moment to deal with it, I may even be able to start the ball rolling today. By the way, the Malfoy and Lestrange fortunes have been added to the Black family as there are no surviving members of either family." Harry responded.

"Oh?" asked Sirius.

"Bellatrix, Rudolphus and Rabastan are dying or have died of oxygen deprivation and carbon poisoning along with their colleagues." answered Harry; "Tragic is it not, cut down before they could torture another person deemed undeserving of magic..."

"What's left of Voldemort's inner circle?"

"Jugson, the Carrow siblings and Avery junior are the only veterans of the last war in the inner circle still alive, though Macnair lives, he is no more than a vegetable. The rest of the Death Eaters are recruits and easily disposed of." Harry answered; "I got Crabbe and Goyle at Malfoy Manor, being Lucius' lackeys I was unsurprised that they were there. The Carrow siblings will be at their manor, Jugson will probably be at Rookwood Hall, Lestrange House or Riddle Manor."

"The war can be brought to an end with ease, it is cleansing Britain of the hatred and discrimination that is rife which will prove a challenge." added Rowena; "Shall we meet at Grimmauld Place?"

"Indeed, I believe it is time for a meeting of the Order." Harry agreed."

Proffering an arm to Rowena and grabbing Sirius, Harry apparated from the castle to the dimly lit hallway of the Black Townhouse. Harry led them into the kitchen before pressing his wand to the Phoenix ring, heating pendants across the country to summon the Order.

Within five minutes, nearly the entire Order, minus Kingsley, the Weasley parents and a few others, were assembled in the kitchen. Harry was sat in back in his chair, basilisk hide boots resting on the tabletop.

"I called this meeting to announce the loss of Malfoy Manor in the early hours of this morning, an unknown force killed and subdued the Death Eaters in residence, sending many by Portkey to the Ministry while looting the entire library and many valuables from the Manor before torching the entire estate with Fiendfyre." Harry announced to an incredible uproar.

Salazar simply fired several concussion charms to bring the meeting to order before picking up where Harry left off.

"Later this morning, Fenrir Greyback and his Lieutenants were killed by said force, Greyback's corpse was delivered to the Minister herself."

"And within the last few minutes, every resident of the High Security floor of Azkaban died of oxygen deprivation and carbon poisoning, including the three Lestrange family members and Dolohov." Harry added; "The House of Black now possesses all assets of the Malfoy and Lestrange families. Snape, you are no longer needed as a spy, you may remain with the Order or retire to playing with your chemistry set."

Snape glared at the hooded figure but remained stood in the kitchen;

"I fight! I, Severus Snape have no intention of backing out!" he barked.

"You have my respect Master Snape." Harry replied calmly; "I must inform you all that the following conversation is going to be locked away in your mind, you will be able to remember it, but until I remove the spell, you will be unable to do any more than remember it."

Salazar quickly drew his wand and layered many privacy charms over the room;

"This conversation will not leave this room in any shape, manner or form." he added as he holstered his wand.

"At the beginning of this summer, I had a bit of an altercation with Tom Riddle which went badly. I was hit by his killing curse, however, it passed through two Battle Spells, altering the composition of it and instead of killing me, dumped me exactly one-thousand and ten years in the past. After spending a year studying, I went onto the duelling circuit, earning a bit of a reputation as the Templar. During that time, I fought both with and against Ares Salazar Slytherin, the founder of Hogwarts, not his little brother, Salazar junior who is the ancestor of our current Dark Lord. In December of 986, Salazar and I burnt down Slytherin Manor, having looted it and liberated the library. A year later and after a siege on our castle, we joined King Æthelred as Battle Mages. I've told you parts of it, we eventually retired, did a bit of travelling before arriving at the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade. That evening, I purchased the land upon which Hogwarts is built, having met Godric, his wife Helga and Rowena who was travelling with them. I was the first Headmaster of Hogwarts, and according to the Charter, still am Head as I forgot to resign."

"Get to the point!" Snape commented.

"Very well, on the Autumn Equinox, Salazar, myself and my other half, Rowena put ourselves in a form of stasis for exactly a thousand years. I introduce you to Lord Ares Salazar Slytherin, Lord and Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient House of Slytherin and Baron of Templesbury. I also introduce the Lady Rowena Ravenclaw, Daughter and Regent Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient House of Ravenclaw, my intended."

Harry sat back under a slight notice-me-not charm while allowing the uproar, gaping and constant firing of questions targeted at the two founders to continue. He cocked his head to one side when Salazar threw a bludgeoning hex at him, allowing it to smash heavily into the wall. Since the attention was directed at his location now, the notice-me-not charm fell.

"And you intend to introduce yourself?" asked McGonagall in her usual severe voice.

"I suppose I ought to..." Harry sighed before slowly lowering the hood of his cloak; "Lord Arlyss FitzPotter, Lord and Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient House of FitzPotter-Templesbury, Earl of Templesbury, Lord Hadrian James Potter, Lord and Head of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Potter and Lord of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, amongst other names and titles."

The shocked silence, punctuated by a slight snigger from Sirius, was brought to a halt when Rowena's hand twitched toward a dagger hanging from her belt;

"Harry dearest, why is there a Nundu next to you under a disillusionment charm?" she said sweetly.

"He was bored being in the castle, poor thing has been stuck there for a millennium and wanted a trip out and some more company..." Harry replied innocently, recognising the act they were playing.

Rowena flicked her wand and the disillusionment charm was lifted, leaving a large, leopard-like cat sat on his haunches next to Harry, his tail wrapped around Harry's back. A slight purr began to sound from the cat as he raised a paw and exchanged a high-five with Harry.

"Salazar, deal with this rabble, I'm a battlefield commander, not a great politician and I have a job to do. Boris, stay with Rowena!" Harry said before vanishing beneath a powerful disillusionment charm and apparating out.

Once again appearing in the corridor near the Queen's study, Harry put an illusion of a smart suit over his robes before removing his concealment charms and walked up to the guards, once again showing no sign of caring that he was being held at gunpoint.

"Gentlemen, Her Majesty asked that I keep Her updated on the state of civil insurrection in one of Her lands and I have news which concerns it." Harry said calmly; "Inform Her Majesty that the Earl of Templesbury, Lord FitzPotter requests Her audience."

A few minutes later and Harry was escorted into the Queen's study where he knelt briefly before rising to his feet.

"You have news my Lord FitzPotter." stated the Queen

"Indeed I have, Your Majesty. The morning after your visit to the castle, a terrorist attack perpetuated by Tom Riddle occurred. In the early hours of light, his forces attacked the central magical district in London, intent on causing incredible damage to our economy without any witnesses, hoping that Minister Fudge would sweep it under the carpet as an accident or some vandals getting out of hand. My forces reacted and we captured a dozen or so Death Eaters and killed near a hundred." Harry said.

"Excellent."

"I replaced the useless Minister Fudge with the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Retired Master Auror Amelia Bones, a veteran of the last war and an excellent fighter. I also reinstated Albus Dumbledore, a veteran of the Second World War and of the last war, as head of the legislative council. In the early hours of this morning, a small, elite force of fighters attacked the Malfoy Ancestral Home, capturing around two hundred Death Eaters, extracting information from several senior terrorists, looting anything of value including a library with over a millennium of knowledge before torching the entire estate."

"So the terrorists have lost how many men?" asked the Queen.

"Approximately two hundred and fifty captured. Killed is unknown as at Malfoy Manor, we were compromised during the final stages of the operation and were forced to go lethal. I would say three hundred dead is fair as after the Malfoy Manor operation, we found the leader of the Voldemort aligned werewolves, a man who locks himself into houses with children on the night of the full moon before transforming. Needless to say we had no hesitation on killing him and every one of his lieutenants. I also disposed of some prisoners who were beyond hope." Harry answered; "Tonight we intend to commit further raids and hopefully, should all go well, the leader will be dead by Christmas and the insurgency over."

"Brilliant, you have my support on the disposal of these terrorists if you can continue to remove them at the rate you are acting at." said the Queen.

Harry simply knelt briefly before striding out and apparating back to Templesbury. Quickly grabbing a loot trunk from the treasury, Harry slipped under his invisibility cloak and apparated away again.

With a slight flick of his wand as he appeared, Harry tore a small hole through the wards of a corrugated iron warehouse and stepped through. The dozen Death Eaters around the complex were quickly dispatched with heart attack curses before Harry entered. Inside was an immense building full of the rarest, most illegal and most expensive potion ingredients. It was a simple matter of summoning all the items into the trunk before leaving the warehouse blazing with the writhing chimeras, dragons and basilisks of Fiendfyre.

Harry had just taken the biggest Death Eater source of income and of ingredients. The warehouse was owned by the Jugson family who traded in potions ingredients. Needless to say, the Dark Lord would be irritated that he could no longer sustain a mercenary army, had few Death Eaters save those who had no knowledge of duelling beyond throwing killing curses around like sticks for a dog.

Finally Harry grabbed the one remaining body which hadn't been destroyed by the Fiendfyre and apparated to the graveyard at Little Hangleton. He slammed the body against the gravestone of Tom Riddle Senior and bound it to the grave. Conjuring a pair of glasses, he set them on the mask with a sticking charm and used a mild cutting curse to carve a lightning bolt on the right hand side of the mask's forehead.

"Morsmorde!" Harry bellowed before apparating back to Templesbury castle just in time for Salazar and Rowena to appear. The former was rolling around on the floor in amusement while Rowena's musical laugh echoed through the hall as she leaned on Boris.

"Anyone care to tell me the source of your amusement?" he asked dryly.

"The-the Order!" Salazar cackled; "Didn't notice I charmed Dumbledore's beard to strangle Snake-Snape- whatever... Top hat man lost his top hat while squeaking and fainting. The rest except Sirius, Remus, Weasley and Fleur are still gaping while Sirius is probably still hexing them."

"Gosh, Salazar Slytherin remembers the name of a girl, that's near enough to a declaration of love!" Rowena pronounced sarcastically, only to be shocked as he failed to deny it and his cheeks reddened slightly.

"He fancies-!" began Harry before ducking out of the way of a powerful cutting curse which gouged a long scar into the wall of the hall.

"Calm it boy!" Harry shouted cheerfully; "I'm heading back to Grimmauld Place, we're raiding in half an hour. Target is in the suburbs of Birmingham, an old orphanage is being used as a Death Eater barracks and we are going for maximum deaths. I'm going to get any of our people who can help."

He exchanged a few dark curses with Salazar before vanishing silently from the Hall, reappearing in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. Fleur was sat sipping at a cup of tea when he appeared, still wearing his hooded cloak and battlerobes.

"Fleur, I hit a major warehouse owned by the Jugson family earlier and found the location of a Death Eater barracks, I'm hitting it with Rowena and Salazar and I wondered if you would like to come along for the trip?" Harry asked.

"I would like a straight answer 'Arry, why did you hide your identity for ze time zat you've been around us masquerading as ze Earl of Templesbury?" Fleur asked coolly.

Harry lowered his hood, giving her the heart-melting Potter trademark grin;

"Simply Fleur dearest, who would believe Harry Potter, the runty leetle boy was one of the more powerful wizards of the tenth century, accompanied by his brother Salazar Slytherin, coincidentally not a blood purist Dark Lord and Rowena Ravenclaw, his intended and on the list of the most beautiful and intelligent women I have ever encountered, a list that is very short and with two names on it. Rowena Ravenclaw and Fleur Delacour."

Fleur blushed slightly and Harry raised his hood before throwing a small wooden cube to Fleur.

"Portkey to the castle. Activates in ten minutes, I expect you in full combat gear, Miss Delacour. We move out in about twenty minutes." Harry said, changing completely from the flattering, sarcastic and cheerful young man to a Battle Mage in the highest echelons.

He apparated back to Templesbury, collapsing onto a wide, throne-like seat at the high table with Rowena sat partly on his lap, her head resting on his shoulder. A short while later, Fleur portkeyed in, clad in the boots, vest, vambraces and cloak of basilisk hide and acromantula silk. Her eyes roved across the high table where Salazar was simply shredding an apple with a dagger, an infuriating smirk adorning his face, directed at his two comrades sat together in one chair.

"This raid has two purposes. The first is simply removal of forces loyal to Tom Riddle." Harry announced; "The second is a psychological reason, I intend for even the most die-hard purist to be afraid of the fate that awaits Death Eaters, so I want _external _injuries visible on any Death Eaters. I haven't been able to get hold of anyone else than you, Miss Delacour, who would be of any use on this adventure."

Rowena then chucked a small block of wood in the air, allowing Harry to snatch it as it fell before he vaulted over the table. Salazar and Rowena stood and simply made their way around the table instead of jumping over it. Harry meanwhile had quickly applied a Portkey enchantment and now held it in the palm of his hand. A moment later and the other three had their hands on the small wooden block when he called out;

"Activate!"

Landing in a dark, shadowed alley, the group looked out. Surrounded by a concrete courtyard was a grim, early Victorian building surrounded by iron railings and patches of grass.

"Serpent, take Delacour, circle right. Eagle with me; no subtlety, lots of damage." Harry hissed.

A full, tense minute later and all four fired powerful blasting curses straight into the walls of the orphanage turned Death Eater barracks. Springing into action, Rowena tore down a few of the wards and transfigured the railings into wolves before sending them off after any Death Eaters.

Harry meanwhile cast a series trebuchet spells, launching heavy rock projectiles at immense velocity into the front of the building, knocking down the front door and most of the façade.

"Only polite to knock." he commented sarcastically.

Four Death Eaters poured out over the rubble in time for one to be hit by Harry's 'Personal Playtime' spell-chain, including the chainsaw curse which mimicked the effects of a chainsaw, the corkscrew curse which bored a corkscrew-like hole through the target, the Vlad the Impaler charm and the anvil-projectile launching spell. A ballista spell from Rowena impaled two more on a single spear-like barbed arrow.

A veritable stream of blasting curses brought down the frontage of the left wing of the building as it shuddered from attacks on the other wing. Some minor battlefield alchemy massively increased the potassium level in the bodies of two advancing Death Eaters. Moments later and they turned into red mists as a second pair were impaled by Rowena using his 'Vlad the Impaler' charm.

Bludgeoning a group to death with a massive wooden beam from the rubble, Harry mused over how such useless wizards got beyond fifth year at Hogwarts, not realising that Rowena's line of thinking had minimal differences. It was then that a group of twenty Death Eaters ran around the corner of the building.

Harry summoned one's internal organs, still moving forward with a chainsaw curse tearing a bloody rent through another. Rowena was equally active, organ exploding curses turning heads into small debris while her flame-cutting curses ripped a bloody and smoking swathe through their ranks.

Pouring a massive amount of magic through one of his wands, Harry tore one of the tall circular stone pillars from the nearby portico before using a second wand to propel it straight into the wall once, twice, three times. Finally, with both wands, he banished it deep into the building. Rowena had meanwhile conjured an immense grappling hook and banished it to hook over the slate-tiled roof. A powerful summoning charm tore a scar through the roof and brought a fair amount of it down like a landslide.

Satisfied as he saw an entire corner of the far side of the building crumble and fall, Harry summoned the firestorm curse and splashed it across the torn roof, setting the beams alight. Wheeling around, a Death Eater was caught by a bubblehead charm, moments before Harry removed all the air from within, turning it into a vacuum and painting the translucent bubble with gore. A second Death Eater got a similar treatment from Rowena, save she added masses of air, causing the head of the terrorist to implode.

"Nice one Eagle, shall we meet up with Sal or head in?" asked Harry as another Death Eater died, impaled by a hundred ship-building nails.

"Circle round and meet up with Sal." responded Rowena, summoning a Death Eater from the roof before brutally banishing him straight into the remains of the wall.

Disposing of further combatants with a combination of gouging curses, cutting curses and other physically and externally damaging curses, Harry and Rowena steadily circled the building until they came upon Salazar.

Fleur lay at his feet as he threw every dark and harmful curse he knew around him. These wizards were more dangerous than most he had ever fought, if only in number and use of the unforgivable curses. A stunning hex had caught Fleur in the face, simply knocking her out. Sending off another dark wizard to Charon with a combination of decapitation and disembowelling curses, Salazar swung around, an entrail-expelling curse meeting it's target as he hit a further pair with lightning and constricting hexes. Salazar felt he was beginning to be overwhelmed, the circle of Death Eaters blown apart, their writhing bodies sent flying into the air. Relief had arrived.

The moment that Harry burst round the corner, he quickly evaluated the situation before firing a concussion hex into the serried ranks of Death Eaters, though Salazar was dropping them like flies, he was being overwhelmed. His hex sent the combatants flying into the air as the earth shook and air blasted from a single spot.

Rowena spun into action as Harry cast his concussion hex, firing streams of fire-cutting curses and cleaving hexes flying from her wand, ignoring the slight wisps of smoke coming from it. Delacour was crumpled at Salazar's feet as he stood over her, casting more curses than she'd ever seen, his power was palpable as blood sprayed around him.

Harry had quickly abandoned his wand in favour of a rapier-like longsword and a stiletto as he weaved an elegant and deadly tapestry of crimson red through the black-clad ranks of his adversaries. Apart from wandless piercing and constricting curses, Harry cut his way through the Death Eaters with simple ancient steel.

Once Fleur was rennervated, the tide had turned with four skilled fighters against unforgivable-armed thugs. Rowena quickly slammed four assailants into the ground with conjured spears and the bloodfire curse as Fleur forced a ball of Veela passionfire into the face of a Death Eater.

Spinning through the Death Eaters in a blur of basilisk hide and steel, Harry threw a wizard into the path of one of his comrade's curses before hurling his dagger into the throat of the caster and summoning it back wandlessly. With grace beyond anything seen for centuries, Harry turned bloodshed into an art form as he left dozens of bodies with cuts and thrusts perforating them in his wake. Finally, he brutally bludgeoned a Death Eater in the face with the pommel of his sword and thrust his stiletto through the back throat of his opponent as he doubled over from a kick to the stomach, severing the spine and piercing some of the central arteries and a tense silence filled the air, only broken by the sound of part of the ex-orphanage's roof collapsing.

"High Warlock Slytherin, once again we have carried the day and well done for holding the scum away from Miss Delacour." stated Harry formally.

"Indeed we have High-Lord Sorcerer FitzPotter." Salazar responded formally before relaxing slightly; "How are you doing Fleur?"

Extinguishing a ball of passionfire, Fleur slowly made her way to Salazar before grabbing him and heatedly kissing him. Harry exchanged a glance with Rowena and shrugged;

"Sal works fast... Can't beat 'em, join 'em." Harry commented and pulled Rowena into a firm kiss of his own.

A few seconds later and Harry separated from Rowena and coughed slightly as neither Fleur or Salazar appeared to have any intention of ceasing their affectionate acts.

"Time to head back to the castle, I don't want to be around here if reinforcements arrive." he said, creating a Portkey.

Once the new couple had finally ceased ignoring Harry, they each grabbed onto the Portkey as Harry cast a localised earthquake curse and activated the Portkey as parts of the wrecked orphanage crumbled.

The moment the team landed in the Great Hall, Fleur once again pulled Salazar into a heated and passionate kiss.

"I'll leave you lot to it, I expect retribution from the Dark Lord for the immense casualties we have inflicted on him." Harry announced; "So for the next week, high alert."

He rapidly fired of message patronus charms to the rest of his select team and then to Dumbledore to alert the Order of the likelihood of retribution before heading up to his study. Once there, Harry slumped into a chair, idly fingering the ring which he had taken to carrying until such time as he could ask Rowena for her hand in marriage. It was a masterpiece of gleaming gold, a single pink diamond set between two tiny crosses, one of Onyx and one of Ivory. Suitable, the balance between light and dark being something of such beauty he mused.

Nearly a week later in the early post-dawn morning, Harry, Rowena, Salazar and Fleur were leaving the Ministry of Magic, having brought in a few Death Eater prisoners when the fireplaces lining the atrium burst into green flames and black-robed wizards flooded in. The lone watch wizard was quickly disposed of by the Death Eaters when the snake-like features of Tom Riddle emerged from behind the hundreds of Death Eaters.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle Junior! It's been too long!" Harry called out with false cheer, striking down a Death Eater with a heart attack curse.

"Who dares call me that!" hissed the Dark Lord.

Casually obliterating a masked Death Eater with some minor battlefield alchemy, Harry responded;

"Inadequate response Tom, what would Lucius say about pureblood customs. Oh! You're a halfblood bastard son of a muggle and I killed Lucius so he can't say anything!" Harry jeered as he butchered the Death Eater next to Voldemort in a spray of blood with a chainsaw curse.

"Potter!"

"Indeed, but to you, Lord Potter." Harry replied; "I'm awfully sorry about Malfoy Manor, Fenrir Greyback, Jugson's warehouse, the orphanage and for killing all the Inner Circle in Azkaban."

"KILL THEM!" screamed Voldemort.

Harry began firing killing curses at an incredible rate with Salazar as Rowena and Fleur conjured streams of Fiendfyre, obliterating the serried ranks of Death Eaters. Tactical idiocy, Harry mused, line up like a bunch of girls with Gilderoy Lockhart and get cut down. Within five minutes, the Death Eaters had been decimated to the point they were hiding behind walls of bodies, which amused Harry no end as he increased the potassium content of each body by hundreds fold until the bodies exploded.

Voldemort stepped out, hissing sibilantly;

"Come come Harry, you may know some good curses, but you cannot think to kill me... Lord Voldemort is immortal, when you die, no one will stand in my way."

"Tom, delusional as ever, were I to die, Lord Slytherin and Lady Ravenclaw would happily destroy you. No man is truly immortal on this plane, maybe on a higher plane, immortality, but it is death you fear is it not. That higher plane where your victims can torment you, or mayhap there is nothing beyond this earth, you fear becoming nothing..." Harry said calmly as he lowered his hood.

"I AM THE HEIR OF SLYTHERIN!" screamed Voldemort.

"My apologies Tom, you are the descendant of Salazar Slytherin junior, not of the founder, Ares Salazar Slytherin as my Lord Slytherin will surely see fit to remind you." Harry continued, collapsing a pillar on top of a group of Death Eaters; "Now, you've been taught how to duel I presume Tom Riddle? We bow to each other, Tom. Come, the niceties must be observed."

Bowing slightly to Riddle, he watched as the Dark Lord inclined his torso slightly before launching a killing curse at the raven-haired young man opposite him. Harry simply summoned a dead Death Eater to take the curse before banishing the body at Riddle, firing a veritable stream of curses at Riddle who summoned a magus shield to protect him. Harry conjured a bundle of spears and banished them toward the Dark Lord who easily turned them into birds and incinerated them.

Blocking five blood-boiling and organ liquefying curses, Harry conjured Fiendfyre with one wand, and fired a sickly brown coloured curse with the other. Reacting too slowly, Riddle conjured another magus shield, which failed to deflect the unknown curse as it would fail to deflect an unforgivable. He collapsed slowly, breaths coming in gasps as Harry slowly strode over.

"That, Thomas Marvolo Riddle, was a curse of my own creation, the combination of the unblockable parts of the killing curse and a soul curse called the soul-fire curse. No parts of your soul outwith your body remain, and with it, the magical reserves you imbued into each Horcrux. When you created those foul things, each time, you halved both your soul and magical core, save you could access your magic in those devices remotely, now, they are gone, goodbye and burn in the depths of hell!" Harry spat.

A mixture of heart attack curses and killing curses slammed into the Dark Lord before Harry carefully etched a lightning bolt scar onto the forehead of the pitiful remains of Tom Riddle. He turned to see the last Death Eater fall from a heart attack curse cast by Rowena. Striding over, Harry holstered his wand, reached into his pocket and gripped the ring he had created for Rowena in his fist.

Falling on one knee before Rowena, ignoring the war-torn battlefield of the Ministry Atrium, Harry held out the ring to her and simply asked;

"Rowena, will you marry me?"

Sliding the ring onto her finger with Harry's assistance, Rowena fell on one knee and grabbed her fiancée in a searing kiss.

"Yes! Yes! You need ask?" she cried happily after breaking the kiss.

The couple rose to their feet, both in great cheer as Harry called out happily;

"I no longer must wear this infernal hood! We no longer need to hide our identities!"

Just then, the Order and a fair contingent of Aurors, led by Dumbledore, appeared in the Atrium opposite the quartet, none of them with their hoods raised anymore.

"Too late ladies." Salazar called out sarcastically; "One Dark Lord very permanently dead and most, if not all of his minions dead."

"NO! IT'S NOT TRUE!" screamed an Auror, raising his wand with the sickly green of a killing curse pulsing on the end.

Harry drew faster, his killing curse slamming into the Auror and sending him flying in a swirl of green magic.

"Any more Death Eaters want to try their mettle?" Harry spat, charging another killing curse into his wand.

When no one stepped forward, the green light pulsing on his wand slowly dissipated. Salazar stepped forward and laid his arm on Harry's forearm.

"Calm brother, the minions of the former Dark Lord are corpses which haven't realised they are dead yet." he said soothingly.

Harry slowly lowered his wand to his side, noticeably _not _holstering it. Salazar meanwhile smirked slightly and conjured a pillar out of the floor, tied the deceased Dark Lord to it and created a sign over it;

_Deceased Dark Lord Tom Marvolo Riddle Junior_

_otherwise know as Voldemort._

_Poke with sticks, see if it twitches!_

"You and your morbid sense of humour Salazar." Harry commented before barking; "MINISTRY LACKEYS! I WILL ANNOUNCE THE EVENTS OF THIS MORNING IN HALF AN HOUR AT HOGWARTS DURING BREAKFAST, NOW FIX UP THIS MESS! My rooms Sal?"

When Salazar nodded, Harry took Rowena's hand and apparated them both to his quarters above the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts, shortly followed by Salazar with Fleur. Harry drew his sword a short-way out of it's scabbard before thrusting it back in.

"Apart from ceremonial occasions, I shall no longer need this. It has been too many years of conflict. It is time the sword is set aside." he said softly before setting himself down next to his newly minted fiancée.

"What do you plan for the future Harry?" Salazar asked.

"A quiet wedding, maybe travel the world, spend some time wearing clothes that aren't for combat purposes, something I haven't done since over a year before I met you Sal. I could ask the same of you two..." Harry replied, finishing with a suggestive glance between Fleur and Salazar, both blushed slightly, something Harry took great pleasure in causing since the two had become a couple.

They sat in silence for a while, Rowena in Harry's lap, resting her head on his shoulder while Fleur sat next to Salazar, enjoying the comfort his embrace brought as he held her close. Harry remotely activated a small compulsion on the castle which encouraged anyone in it's wards to go to the Great Hall and discouraged leaving the Great Hall. Eventually he stood up, putting Rowena on her feet.

"Time to face the brats in the Great Hall." Harry sighed; "Apparate to the alcove in the Entrance Hall we usually use."

He quickly vanished, followed by Rowena, then Salazar with Fleur to a shadowed corner in the dim light below the main staircase. Firing a quick mental probe to Dumbledore, just a mental prod to tell him to begin his announcements, Harry led them to behind the partially closed Great Hall doors. Inside, Dumbledore stood and made his way to the lectern at the head of the hall.

"Ladies, Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, today, one of the great events of modern magical history occurred. I leave the announcement to a child of the Halls of Hogwarts! I welcome back to Hogwarts, Lord Potter-Black!" Dumbledore announced.

Harry loosened his aura, and as Salazar, Rowena and Fleur copied him, he banished the doors open, allowing them to thunder against the stone doorframe before striding in, Rowena on his right arm, his left resting on the pommel of his sword and Salazar and Fleur alongside them.

The students were stunned as two near identical wizards swept in with radiantly beautiful women on their arms. The differences between the two wizards were negligible, one had a single, long scar across the cheek of one and a slight mark on his forehead of a lightning bolt. All four were dressed in dark green, near black armour, with sheathed swords hanging on their left hips.

Harry released Rowena and made his way to a spot next to the lectern that he had always spoken from when he taught at Hogwarts before announcing in a carrying voice;

"Tom Marvolo Riddle Junior, otherwise known as the Dark Lord Voldemort, is dead!"

Uproar reigned for a minute before Harry bellowed;

"ENOUGH! It is true, during an ill-fated attack on the Ministry not an hour ago, the remaining forces of Voldemort were eliminated and I killed the Dark Lord myself. Over the last few weeks, a select group have been responsible for the disposal of these terrorists, culminating in the skirmish today."

A small first-year, presumably a muggleborn stood up and asked;

"Who are you?"

"Harry Potter!" he replied.

"Potter's dead!" shouted Ron, swelling up.

A slight legilimency scan showed that Ron had been using his absence to claim credit for all of their adventures during the last few years while simultaneously painting him as a coward.

"I am not dead as I am still talking!" Harry barked; "During a skirmish with Voldemort at my former place of residence, I was involved in a temporal incident which resulted in my absence until the Autumn Equinox of this year. For me, an entire decade passed, ten years, before I was able to return here, during which time I met my fiancée Rowena and honourary brother Sal."

At this announcement, most of the females in the hall fixed Rowena with glares which failed to faze her in the least. Harry noticed that Ginny Weasley's glare was the worst and she was reaching for her wand. Targeting Hogwarts' binding ward, Harry froze her, rendering her unable to move as he had done with Ron. He'd known she had a crush on him but didn't realise how bad it was when he took a brief legilimency scan which informed him of her carefully nurtured belief that the 'Boy-who-lived' was fated to be hers and especially, his vaults and properties would be hers.

"I shall allow you to dine now." Harry announced before striding out of the Hall with Rowena next to him and Salazar and Fleur just behind them.

As they reached the entrance hall, Harry released the binds on Ron and Ginny, and as expected, they both rushed to confront the quartet who were stood, looking out of the front doors onto the lawns.

"Who the hell do you think you are Potter?" shouted Ron.

"I believe you answered that yourself." Harry replied smoothly.

"Move it whore, Harry and I are fated to be together!" screamed Ginny, trying to ram Rowena away from Harry.

Rowena simply grabbed Ginny's arm, spun around and threw her back toward the Great Hall. As she rose, Harry fixed the two Weasley's with a burning glare.

"I've been in a romantic relationship with Rowena for over two years and have known her for around four years, I have known you, Miss Weasley, for around the same amount of time and never had a full conversation. Ron, a decade ago I thought you were both a jealous twit and still my friend, now you are just the former, a jealous twit." Harry commented, hitting Ginny with a mild, wandless bludgeoning hex as she rose to attack them again; "I wish you well and inform you that the Potter, Black, Malfoy, Lestrange and FitzPotter-Templesbury vaults will remain mine and not be handed over freely."

After a quiet wedding held in Godric's hollow, attended by Fleur, Salazar, Remus, Sirius and Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore, Harry and Rowena had made their way to a small Caribbean island where the Potter family had a villa. It was in the mid evening after over a month and a half on the island, when Harry and Rowena were walking down the beach, respectively wearing a pair of swimming trunks and a barely respectable bikini, that Rowena announced.

"Harry, in about eight months, you're going to be a father!"

Harry beamed for a moment before fainting in a heap on the sand.


End file.
